Question: Can drugs cure multiple diseases?

Daniel Rhodes answered on 5 Jun 2018:

Absolutely! In fact almost all drugs work on multiple targets (targets being proteins in this case, the molecules that actually do most of the tasks in your body). One really good example of this is the fact that drugs cause side effects. Side effects are generally just a drug unintentionally affecting a different part of you. A really important example of drugs targeting multiple diseases is thalidomide. This drug was originally designed as a sedative – however it caused catastrophic defects in children whose mothers had taken the drug whilst pregnant. Today, much more is understood about the drug, and it is used to treat several types of cancer as well as leprosy.