Drug Repurposing for Cocaine Use Disorder (CUD) Using a Combined Strategy of Artificial Intelligence (AI)-Based Prediction and Retrospective Clinical Corroboration

An estimated 5.5 million people aged 12 or older were cocaine users and 977,000 people had a cocaine use disorder (CUD). Currently there are no medications approved to treat CUD. Identifying novel pharmacotherapies for CUD, while a priority, has been challenged by the lack of interest from the pharmaceutical industry and by lengthy traditional drug development processes. Thus, research to repurposing existing drugs may accelerate findings of anti-CUD medications. The goal for this study is to identify and evaluate potential anti-CUD drugs by developing artificial intelligence (AI)-powered drug discovery technologies. The output of this project will be a list of promising anti-CUD candidates that may help expeditiously translate into clinical trials to benefit CUD patients.