Why is drug chirality important and why many drugs require specific chirality in order to active?
Drugs function mainly by interacting with the enzymes of our body. Some enzymes are themselves chiral, hence can only interact/react with one enantiomer of a drug, it would either be non-reactive to the other enantiomer, or may even react differently, making it dangerous to the human health. It all boils down to the stereochemistry of the reaction.
For example, in Thalidomide, Laboratory tests after the thalidomide disaster showed that in some animals the 'S' enantiomer was tetragenic but the 'R' isomer was an effective sedative.
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