A Look at the Importance of Chirality in Drug Activity: Some Significative Examples

Abstract

Chirality plays an important role in the development of many pharmaceuticals, being a general property of ‘handedness’; nevertheless, a large number of pharmaceuticals are still marketed and administered as racemates. Chirality is all around and even within us; indeed, receptors and enzymes are chiral entities and interact in a specific manner with chiral drugs. Consequently, controlling enantiomeric purity and isolating the enantiomers from chiral drugs remains a crucial subject for analytical, clinical, and regulatory purposes, thus, improving the drug safety profile. The classical examples of spontaneous enantiomerization and severe toxicity related to chirality are represented by ibuprofen and thalidomide, respectively, but numerous other cases have been reported in the literature. This review intends to offer a brief overview on the most common chiral drugs used in therapy for the treatment of various diseases.