Thus, developing a chemical synthesis reaction that selectively produces one enantiomer of chiral molecules useful in medicine is of great significance in the synthesis of drugs and their precursors.

For many drugs and naturally occurring molecules, the desired bioactivity resides in one enantiomer only (Panel A). Asymmetric organocatalysis mediated by small chiral organic molecules (e.g., L ...

The importance of chirality -- or 'handedness' -- in drug development was brought to light in a devastating way almost half a century ago with the development of the Thalidomide drug. Prescribed ...

Scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) say they have invented a new technique for constructing chiral drug molecules, whose structural complexity allows them to have mirror-image ...

Chiral switches are chiral drugs that have already been claimed, approved and marketed as racemates or as mixtures of stereoisomers, but have since been redeveloped as single enantiomers.

Hold out your hands, palms up, and move them so they are on top of each other. With a little experimentation—and perhaps a ...

Chirality is a critical factor in the discovery of drugs derived from natural products. Natural products are intricate organic molecules biosynthesized by living organisms, exhibiting a broad spectrum ...

One prominent example of a chiral switch occurred in 2001, when the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved AstraZeneca’s esomeprazole (Nexium), a proton pump inhibitor (PPI) used to ...

The business strategies of companies involved in chiral drug development were cast into doubt in October after Eli Lilly (Indianapolis, IL) decided not to pursue the development of R-fluoxetine ...

Some chiral drug molecules are therapeutic in one orientation and toxic in the opposite, so isolating the desired enantiomer is often essential for drug manufacturers and methods to force chemical ...

As chemists have learned through tragedies like the birth defects caused when the chiral drug thalidomide racemized in pregnant women, losing control over a molecule’s configuration can be fatal.