Malaysia can turn drug repurposing into a public-good engine

Countries, health systems, and patients across the Global South face significant challenges in accessing treatment due to high costs, particularly for cancer and rare diseases. Novel targeted cancer therapies can reach RM15,000–20,000 per dose, and personalised gene therapies for rare conditions may exceed several million ringgit. This puts them far beyond what most patients and healthcare systems can afford.

Drug repurposing – the practice of finding new uses for existing medicines – offers Malaysia a practical pathway to affordable innovation. By building on compounds with established safety profiles, countries can shorten the journey from laboratory evidence to clinical use. This is particularly important for rare diseases and cancers, where traditional drug development is often prohibitively slow and commercially unattractive.