Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2006 Jun;2(2):85-100.

Chiral drugs: an overview

Lien Ai Nguyen  1 , Hua He, Chuong Pham-Huy
Affiliations

Chiral drugs: an overview

Lien Ai Nguyen et al. Int J Biomed Sci. 2006 Jun.

Abstract

About more than half of the drugs currently in use are chiral compounds and near 90% of the last ones are marketed as racemates consisting of an equimolar mixture of two enantiomers. Although they have the same chemical structure, most isomers of chiral drugs exhibit marked differences in biological activities such as pharmacology, toxicology, pharmacokinetics, metabolism etc. Some mechanisms of these properties are also explained. Therefore, it is important to promote the chiral separation and analysis of racemic drugs in pharmaceutical industry as well as in clinic in order to eliminate the unwanted isomer from the preparation and to find an optimal treatment and a right therapeutic control for the patient. In this article, we review the nomenclature, pharmacology, toxicology, pharmacokinetics, metabolism etc of some usual chiral drugs as well as their mechanisms. Different techniques used for the chiral separation in pharmaceutical industry as well as in clinical analyses are also examined.

Keywords: analysis; chiral drugs; chiral separation; chiral terms; enantioselective antibodies; metabolism; pharmacokinetics; pharmacology; toxicology.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
H behind the plane of the paper.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Easson-Stedman hypothetical interaction between the two enantiomers of a racemic drug with a receptor at the drug binding sites. The three substituents A, B, C of the active enantiomer (left) can interact with three binding sites a, b, c of a receptor by forming three contacts Aa, Bb and Cc, whereas the inactive enantiomer (right) cannot because the contact is insufficient. Note: This figure is in the publication of McConalthy and Owens (47).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Challener CA. In: Chiral drugs. 1st. Aldershot (England): Ashgate Publisher; 2001. Overview of chirality; pp. 3–14.
    1. Drayer DE. The early history of stereochemistry. In: Wainer IW, editor. Drug stereochemistry. Analytical methods and pharmacology. 2nd. New York: Marcel Dekker Publisher; 1993. pp. 1–24.
    1. Rentsch KM. The importance of stereoselective determination of drugs in the clinical laboratory. Journal of Biochemical and Biophysical Methods. 2002;54(1-3):1–9. - PubMed
    1. Walther W, Netscher T. Design and development of chiral reagents for the chromatographic determination of chiral alcohols. Chirality. 1996;8:397–401.
    1. Katzung BG. In: Basic and clinical pharmacology. 9th. New York: Lange Medical Books/McGraw Hill; 2004. The nature of drugs; pp. 3–5.

LinkOut - more resources