The Future of Prodrugs Design

Rafik Karaman

Rafik Karaman Department of Bioorganic Chemistry, Faculty of Pharmacy, Al-Quds University, P.O. Box 20002, Jerusalem, Palestine and Department of Sciences, University of Basilicata, Viadell�Ateneo Lucano 10, 85100, Potenza, Italy.

Keywords: Prodrugs, computational methods, ADME, drugs, correlations between calculated and experimental values

Abstract

When knowledge fails to provide answers to important questions such as how to improve the bioavailability of vital medications, Imagination is more important than knowledge, as Albert Einstein once said. Ingenuity in the design of effective prodrugs has been lacking in quantity and quality. The reasons behind the low quality of ingenuity could be related to the fact that medicinal chemists have expertise in organic and organometalic chemistry not in biochemistry and biology. On the other hand, pharmaceutical chemists, biologists and biochemists do not have the expertise to make sophisticated chemical devices. Therefore, in order for a prodrug strategy to work, a team consisting of all this expertise is necessary.