The framework of Vivia's research is “reprofiling,” the search for new indications, or new usages, for existing drugs. The “reprofiling” model to discover new treatments is a safer and shorter model of modern biotechnology. Research starts with drugs already approved for human use (phase II forward), skipping the stages of greater risk (preclinical and phase I) which are the main cause of failure in drug development, as only 1 out of every 5.000 compounds studied passes phase I. Additionally, the result of research with existing drugs is a candidate for clinical phase II or very close to phase II, substantially shortening the time until the drug reaches the market, from 15 to 3-5 years.
Reprofiling has always been the most natural and safest way of discovering new treatments. Nowadays, about 50% of the indications for commercialized drugs correspond to new usages (new indications) of drugs (in other words, reprofiling) originally approved for the treatment of other diseases. These discoveries have traditionally been made by serendipity or through specific research centered on the effect of a given drug on a given disease. Vivia uses the potential of the ExviTech technology platform to escalate this successful model, by means of a systematic process in the search of new uses of drugs directly on patient samples. Vivia analyzes the effect of approximately 2.500 existing drugs and combinations per sample, in the search for a possible cure for the diseases investigated.