Imidazole-based drugs and drug discovery: Present and future perspectives

In the past decades, interdisciplinary research has been of great interest for researchers and a lot of work has been done for the synthesis of heterocyclic molecules. Among the important heterocycles, imidazole scaffolds act as a bridge between synthetic organic chemistry and medicinal chemistry as they possess a plethora of biological applications like anticancer, antifungal, antiviral, antitubercular, antidiabetic, anticonvulsant, antiulcer, and urease inhibitory, and are also helpful in treatment of various diseases like Alzheimer’s, cardiovascular, and many more. The quest for novel biologically potent imidazole derivatives continues to be a motivating area of search in medicinal chemistry and forces researchers to explore new drugs. The present chapter endeavors to provide ample information on imidazole-based drug discovery, and its present and future viewpoints. To benefit a large community of drug designers, the facts and data from the previous findings are arranged in a systemized way and are easily searchable with a query structure and its analogs.