Recent Insights in Multi-Target Drugs in Pharmacology and Medicinal Chemistry

The document explores the growing interest in multitarget drugs, which interact with multiple biological targets simultaneously, offering advantages over traditional single-target drugs, especially for complex diseases like neurodegenerative disorders, cancer, and infections with drug resistance. Recent trends show an increase in drug approvals for multitarget agents, with 18 out of 73 new drugs in Europe between 2023 and 2024 being multitarget. Despite their promise, challenges such as drug promiscuity and off-target effects remain. The document highlights drug repurposing as a cost-effective alternative, with examples like thalidomide and minoxidil. It discusses advancements in multitarget drug design, including virtual screening and pharmacophore combination approaches, and emphasizes the importance of multitarget therapies in addressing complex diseases, with examples in Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, ALS, cancer, malaria, leishmaniasis, and COVID-19. The conclusion underscores the potential of multitarget drugs to overcome limitations of single-target therapies, though challenges in balancing therapeutic effects and bioavailability persist.