The "Cyclopropyl Fragment" is a Versatile Player that Frequently Appears in Preclinical/Clinical Drug Molecules.

Recently, there has been an increasing use of the cyclopropyl ring in drug development to transition drug candidates from the preclinical to clinical stage. Important features of the cyclopropane ring are, the (1) coplanarity of the three carbon atoms, (2) relatively shorter (1.51 Å) C-C bonds, (3) enhanced π-character of C-C bonds, and (4) C-H bonds are shorter and stronger than those in alkanes. The present review will focus on the contributions that a cyclopropyl ring makes to the properties of drugs containing it. Consequently, the cyclopropyl ring addresses multiple roadblocks that can occur during drug discovery such as (a) enhancing potency, (b) reducing off-target effects, (c) increasing metabolic stability, (d) increasing brain permeability, (e) decreasing plasma clearance, (f) contributing to an entropically more favorable binding to the receptor, (g) conformational restriction of peptides/peptidomimetics to prevent proteolytic hydrolysis, and (h) altering drug pK to reduce its P-glycoprotein efflux ratio.