believe in our approach. Of course, biology needs to be inquiry-based, but to teach it in a physical science vacuum is counterproductive. VIN LOPRESTI LDRD Program Office, Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque, NM 87185–0123, USA. E-mail: vclopre@ sandia.gov Purposeful Learning with Drug Repurposing HIGH-THROUGHPUT SCREENING (HTS) OF comprehensive approved drug libraries has revealed new uses for old drugs (1, 2). Although repurposing of drugs has been used for decades at the discretion of physicians (3), the Policy Forum “Repurposing with a differ- ence” by M. S. Boguski et al. (12 June, p. 1394) describes a revolutionary approach to re- search and development in the drug industry that uses “repurposing pharmacovigilance” to find novel beneficial effects of drugs rather than adverse effects. This is a systematic approach that integrates new business models, patient-as-consumer activism through online social networking, information technology, and genomics as powerful tools. As educators at the undergraduate and graduate levels, we believe that “repurposing pharmacovigilance” offers an innovative and relatively inexpensive interdisciplinary learning approach that can be used to engage students across the sciences and medicine as well as business and the humanities. Through analysis of case studies, students can learn about neglected diseases from a scientific and public policy point of view. Student proj- www.sciencemag.org SCIENCE VOL 325 11 SEPTEMBER 2009 1339 Energy budgets in the brain 1349 Signaling in myelin formation 1353 ect teams can work together in the classroom or laboratory to explore statistical data min- ing with the use of patient advocacy Web sites such as Resounding Health, pharmaco- logical data, or analysis of HTS results from drug libraries to reveal new repurposing applications. Budding scientists trained in rights-based approaches would not limit themselves to drug development but would strive toward the availability of a public health structure, accessibility of these inno- vations, and acceptability by the users as well as the high quality of drugs (4). The scien- tific and ethical questions that evolve for dis- cussion and debate around developing and providing these drugs to the target popula- tion will prepare the next generation of scien- tists and physicians for meeting the new challenges of unmet medical needs that lie ahead. Ultimately, patients will benefit from a more efficient drug discovery process that relies on complementary, not conflicting, scientific and human rights principles. JEFFREY H. TONEY, 1 * JEFFRY I. FASICK, 2 SONAL SINGH, 3 CHRIS BEYRER, 3 DAVID J. SULLIVAN JR. 4 1 College of Natural, Applied, and Health Sciences, Kean University, Union, NJ 07083, USA. 2 Department of Biological Sciences, Kean University, Union, NJ 07083, USA. Published by AAAS on October 14, 2009 www.sciencemag.org Downloaded from