Chirality: The Important Factor for Drug Discovery and Development

A special issue of Pharmaceuticals (ISSN 1424-8247). This special issue belongs to the section "Medicinal Chemistry".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 25 December 2024 | Viewed by 1498

Special Issue Editors


E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Institute of Materia Medica, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences & Peking Union Medical College, Beijing, China
Interests: chiral drugs; natural products; structure elucidation; chiral sensing; quantum-chemical calculation; chiroptical spectroscopy
School of Chemical and Biological Engineering, University of Science and Technology Beijing, Beijing, China
Interests: chiral drugs; natural products; chiral resolution; organic synthesis; methodology development; reaction mechanism
School of Chinese Materia Medica, Beijing University of Chinese Medicine, Beijing, China
Interests: total synthesis of natural products; chiral separation; asymmetry catalysis; active peptide synthesis; stapled peptide; structure elucidation

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Chirality is a neglectable factor affecting the biological behavior of different stereoisomers and has attracted great attention during the process of novel drug discovery and development. In 2022, more than 70% of the new chemical entities approved by the FDA are chiral. In addition to point chirality, axial chirality, such as atropisomerism, is also common in drugs.

Over the last two decades, great achievements have been made in the field of asymmetric synthesis of chiral drugs and their intermediates catalyzed by either metal complexes or enzymes. The emergence of new materials including metal organic frames provides more choices of stationary phases for chiral resolution and chiral analysis. Meanwhile, with the development of quantum-chemical theory and computing power, the characterization of stereochemical structures has been greatly facilitated with the aid of NMR and chiroptical spectroscopic techniques.

In the Special Issue titled "Chirality: The Important Factor for Drug Discovery and Development", both reviews and original articles are invited. Topics include all aspects of chiral drug research, i.e., asymmetric synthesis, chiral resolution, chiral analysis, chiroptical spectroscopy, and biological assessment of stereoisomers. The collection of manuscripts will be published as a Special Issue of the journal.

Prof. Dr. Li Li
Dr. Li Xuqin
Dr. Ma Tao
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Pharmaceuticals is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2900 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • chiral drugs
  • chiral natural products
  • chiral resolution
  • asymmetric synthesis
  • chiral spectroscopy
  • chiral impurities
  • atropisomerism
  • chiral analysis

Benefits of Publishing in a Special Issue

  • Ease of navigation: Grouping papers by topic helps scholars navigate broad scope journals more efficiently.
  • Greater discoverability: Special Issues support the reach and impact of scientific research. Articles in Special Issues are more discoverable and cited more frequently.
  • Expansion of research network: Special Issues facilitate connections among authors, fostering scientific collaborations.
  • External promotion: Articles in Special Issues are often promoted through the journal's social media, increasing their visibility.
  • e-Book format: Special Issues with more than 10 articles can be published as dedicated e-books, ensuring wide and rapid dissemination.

Further information on MDPI's Special Issue polices can be found here.

Published Papers (1 paper)

Order results
Result details
Select all
Export citation of selected articles as:

Research

16 pages, 4617 KiB  
Article
Chiral Hydroxy Metabolite of Mebendazole: Analytical and Semi-Preparative High-Performance Liquid Chromatography Resolution and Chiroptical Properties
by Paolo Guglielmi, Gaia Pulitelli, Francesca Arrighi, Daniela Secci, Marco Pierini and Roberto Cirilli
Pharmaceuticals 2024, 17(6), 696; https://doi.org/10.3390/ph17060696 - 28 May 2024
Viewed by 626
Abstract
Mebendazole (MBZ) is a benzimidazole carbamate anthelmintic used worldwide for the treatment and prevention of parasitic disorders in animals and humans. A large number of in vivo and in vitro studies have demonstrated that MBZ also has anticancer activity in multiple [...] Read more.
Mebendazole (MBZ) is a benzimidazole carbamate anthelmintic used worldwide for the treatment and prevention of parasitic disorders in animals and humans. A large number of in vivo and in vitro studies have demonstrated that MBZ also has anticancer activity in multiple types of cancers. After oral administration, the phenylketone moiety of MBZ is rapidly reduced to the hydroxyl group to form the chiral hydroxy metabolite (MBZ-OH). To the best of our knowledge, there is no information in the literature on the stereochemical course of transformation and the anthelmintic and antitumor activity of individual enantiomers of MBZ-OH. In the present study, we describe in detail the direct HPLC resolution of MBZ-OH on a 100 mm × 4.6 mm Chirapak IG-3 column packed with 3 μm silica particles containing amylose (3-chloro-5-methylphenylcarbamate) as a selector. At 25 °C and using pure methanol as the mobile phase, the enantioseparation and resolution factors were 2.38 and 6.13, respectively. These conditions were scaled up at a semi-preparative scale using a 250 mm × 10 mm Chiralpak IG column to isolate multi-milligram amounts of both enantiomeric forms of the chiral metabolite. The chiroptical properties of the collected enantiomers were determined and, through a theoretical study, were related to the more stable conformations of MBZ-OH. The first and second eluted enantiomers were dextrorotatory and levorotatory, respectively, in dimethylformamide solution. Finally, by recording the retention factors of the enantiomers as the water content in the water–acetonitrile mobile phases was progressively varied, U-shaped retention maps were generated, indicating a dual and competitive hydrophilic interaction liquid chromatography and reversed-phase liquid chromatography retention mechanism on the Chirapak IG-3 chiral stationary phase. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Chirality: The Important Factor for Drug Discovery and Development)
Show Figures

Graphical abstract

Back to TopTop