An insight into the biological activity and structure-based drug design attributes of sulfonylpiperazine derivatives

Abstract

The development of new, effective drugs containing nitrogen and sulfur heteroatoms is of paramount importance in medicinal chemistry. A versatile and rational approach for drug design is molecular hybridization (MH) which involves the combination of two pharmacophore molecules possessing distinct intrinsic activity into a single scaffold for enhancing their therapeutic potential. Sulfonylpiperazine hybrids emerged as an attractive scaffold because of their usefulness to target multiple disease areas, simple synthetic pathways, low toxicity, and metabolic stability. This review highlights the applications of various sulfonylpiperazine derivatives in a wide range of therapeutic areas. The structure-activity relationship (SAR) aspects have also been discussed. We anticipate that this review will be useful for medicinal chemists, biochemists, and drug discovery scientists, providing new ideas for the drug design and development of efficacious, selective, and safer drugs against diverse therapeutic areas.