Effects of Stereoisomers on Drug Activity |Biomedgrid

Chirality occupies an important position as it is a major factor in determining the role and synthesis of drugs. Chiral switch has helped in developing numerous drugs, it is amazing how two molecules that just differ in spatial arrangement of their atoms can have extremely different biological activities and thus extraordinary different effects on human body. In pharmaceutical industry many of the drugs are used as chiral products and many of them are marketed as racemates. Number of cardiovascular drugs like angiotensin converting enzyme inhibitors, calcium channel blockers and Beta-adrenergic blockers are used as chiral products. The chiral inversion is mainly of two types which include unidirectional and bidirectional. NSAIDs are the common example of unidirectional inversion while the drugs like temazepam, oxazepam and lorazepama re the examples of bidirectional inversion. Chiral molecules show stereo selective properties so these molecules differ in their metabolic pathways and mechanism of action. In the same way racemates work where one provides higher pharmacological actions than the other due to stereo selectivity. Choosing of enantiomers is a crucial picking as if chiral antidote chosen wrong may lead to carcinogenicity and teratogenicity [1,2].