From 2001 to 2011, the US Food and Drug Administration approved 9 single-enantiomer drugs with racemic precursors. None showed pre-approval evidence of improved efficacy over the racemic precursor. We ...

Chiral switches are chiral drugs that have already been claimed, approved and marketed as racemates or as mixtures of stereoisomers, but have since been redeveloped as single enantiomers. The ...

Single-enantiomer drugs account for nearly 40% of the global pharmaceutical market. The author analyzes the current market for single-enantiomer drugs, their role as a generic drug defense strategy, ...

Thalidomide, one of the most infamous drugs of all, caused severe birth defects in the children of pregnant women who took the drug for nausea in the 1950s. Its story has been repeated over and over – ...