CMap Analysis - Drug Repurposing Based on Drug-Drug Transcriptomic Similarity

Similar drugs often share common targets or treat the same disease. This observation is also called the guilt-by-association principle. Following this principle, an immediate use of the Connectivity Map is to look for similar drugs in the Touchstone app from the CLUE platform. We will use simvastatin, a lipid-lowering medication for dyslipidemia and preventing atherosclerosis-related complications such as stroke and heart attacks, as an example in this section. Our assumption is that other HMG-CoA reductase inhibitors, such as atorvastatin, fluvastatin, lovastatin, pitavastatin, pravastatin, and rosuvastatin, can be rediscovered by CLUE.