Researchers at the University of Geneva are scouring libraries of approved drugs in search of new treatments for rare diseases – with some success. The approach is now gaining traction globally as pharmaceutical companies’ interest in rare disease drug development wanes. Five years ago Vladimir Katanaev’s lab at the University of Geneva made a startling discovery. They found that widely available zinc salts – which were approved in the US in 1997 to treat a metabolic disorder called Wilson Disea