ABSTRACT

In the year 2000, the sales of chiral drugs reached $120 billion representing almost onethird of all drug sales world-wide (Figure 3.1), a fact which reinforces the importance of the link between chirality and drug design. In turn, this stems from the often overlooked reality that the biological targets for which these drugs are designed to interact with are themselves chiral. Therefore, dramatic differences are often witnessed in the action of one enantiomer over another in biological systems, ultimately in humans.