Recent Studies on Neglected Drug Design

Abstract

Background: Neglected diseases require special attention when looking for new therapeutic alternatives, as these are diseases of extreme complexity and severity that affect populations belonging to lower social classes who lack access to basic rights, such as sanitation.

Introduction: Among the alternatives available for obtaining new drugs is Medicinal Chemistry, which is responsible for the discovery, identification, invention, and preparation of prototypes. In this perspective, the present work aims to make a bibliographic review on the recent studies of Medicinal Chemistry applied to neglected diseases.

Methods: A literature review was carried out by searching the "Web of Sciences" database, including recent articles published on the Neglected Drug Design.

Results: In general, it was noticed that the most studied neglected diseases corresponded to Chagas disease and leishmaniasis, with studies on organic synthesis, optimization of structures, and molecular hybrids being the most used strategies. It is also worth mentioning the growing number of computationally developed studies, providing speed and optimization of costs in the procurement process.

Conclusion: The CADD approach and organic synthesis studies, when applied in the area of Medicinal Chemistry, have proven to be important in the research and discovery of drugs for Neglected Diseases, both in terms of planning the experimental methodology used to obtain it and in the selection of compounds with higher activity potential.

Keywords: Computer-aided drug design (CADD); Drug discovery; Ligand-based drug design (LBDD); Medicinal chemistry; Neglected diseases; Organic synthesis.; Structure-based drug design (SBDD).