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Faced with skyrocketing costs for developing new drugs, researchers are looking at ways to repurpose older ones — and even some that failed in initial trials. When a young physician opted to do a short stint in Grant Churchill's pharmacology lab as part of his medical training, he asked for a task that would quickly teach him the tools of the trade. “So I thought, 'I have a good project for you',” says Churchill. That was in 2010, and Churchill's group at the University of Oxford, UK, was looking for ways to treat bipolar disorder without using lithium — a drug that often works well, but is plagued with side effects. So Churchill asked the physician, Justyn Thomas, to screen all of the 450 c
