Drug Repurposing & Repositioning: Turning Scientific Opportunity into Commercial Reality

New Insight IP Boardroom Series Report | September 2026

Drug repurposing offers an attractive proposition: identifying new therapeutic uses for existing pharmaceutical compounds can reduce development timelines, leverage established safety data and lower some of the risks associated with traditional drug discovery. 

Yet building a sustainable commercial model around a repurposed drug remains considerably more complex.

How do you create meaningful exclusivity around an existing compound? What role can method-of-use and secondary patents play? How is the regulatory environment changing? And can pricing, reimbursement and investment models provide sufficient incentives to bring repurposed medicines successfully to market?

In the latest Insight IP Boardroom Series, we bring together experts from across intellectual property, pharmaceuticals, regulation, reimbursement and investment to examine these questions and explore what the future could look like.

What the report explores

The report provides practical expert perspectives on:

• The business case for drug repurposing and how it differs from traditional innovator and generic pharmaceutical models.
• IP and patent strategy, including methods-of-use claims, secondary patents, new formulations and the importance of coordinating patent filings with clinical development.
• European pharmaceutical reform and the growing recognition of repurposing within the evolving EU regulatory framework.
• Pricing and reimbursement, including the challenge of balancing affordable patient access with sufficient returns to incentivise development.
• The investor perspective and the role of IP strength, technology, management teams and exit strategies in determining whether repurposing opportunities attract capital.
• The future of drug repurposing and the need for greater collaboration between pharmaceutical companies, investors, regulators, governments and payers.
• Expert perspectives from across the industry

The report brings together contributions from:

• Anja Schiel – Senior Adviser; Lead Methodologist in Regulatory and Pharmacoeconomic Statistics, NOMA
• Lema Meiwand – Investment Analyst – Health, Oost NL
• Jaap Mannaerts – Dutch and European Patent Attorney / Partner, NLO
• Paul Fehlner – SVP, Chief IP Counsel, Spyre Therapeutics
• Barend Bouma – Dutch and European Patent Attorney / Partner, NLO