药物发现通常侧重于从头设计方法，这种方法极其昂贵，并且需要数年的时间才能进入市场。发现现有药物的新治疗益处可能有助于为具有复杂医疗需求的个人提供安全、廉价且及时的新治疗替代方案。因此，当药物产量和肿瘤药物疗效似乎陷入僵局时，药物再利用是改善癌症治疗的一种令人着迷的方法。这篇综述探讨了计算机模拟药物再利用如何提供快速增加抗癌药物库的机会，更重要的是，克服现有癌症疗法针对肿瘤学中新旧治疗靶点的一些限制。还讨论了古老的非肿瘤化合物的创新潜在靶点和癌症治疗中的重要信号通路。这篇综述还包括许多近年来显示出潜在抗癌特性的植物源化合物。在这里，我们还试图将焦点放在支持临床研究的新机制上，这在未来可能变得越来越重要；同时，未解决或失败的临床试验研究应根据所提供的技术和信息进一步重新研究。这些令人鼓舞的发现结合在一起，将为重新利用更多非肿瘤药物来治疗癌症提供新的见解。

Drug discovery has customarily focused on a de novo design approach, which is extremely expensive and takes several years to evolve before reaching the market. Discovering novel therapeutic benefits for the current drugs could contribute to new treatment alternatives for individuals with complex medical demands that are safe, inexpensive, and timely. In this consequence, when pharmaceutically yield and oncology drug efficacy appear to have hit a stalemate, drug repurposing is a fascinating method for improving cancer treatment. This review gathered about how in silico drug repurposing offers the opportunity to quickly increase the anticancer drug arsenal and, more importantly, overcome some of the limits of existing cancer therapies against both old and new therapeutic targets in oncology. The ancient nononcology compounds' innovative potential targets and important signaling pathways in cancer therapy are also discussed. This review also includes many plant-derived chemical compounds that have shown potential anticancer properties in recent years. Here, we have also tried to bring the spotlight on the new mechanisms to support clinical research, which may become increasingly essential in the future; at the same time, the unsolved or failed clinical trial study should be reinvestigated further based on the techniques and information provided. These encouraging findings, combined together, will through new insight on repurposing more non-oncology drugs for the treatment of cancer.