Receptors, synthetic biological

R380 M. Inouye, Synthetic Hydrogen-Bonding Receptors for Biologically Essential Monosaccharides , Yuki Gosei Kagaku Kyokaishi, 2000, 58, 1077... 

The pyrrolidine ring is found abundantly in both naturally occurring and synthetic biologically active compounds. The alkaloid nicotine, an agonist for the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor, is a notorious example of the former. Pyrrolidine itself is found in carrot and tobacco leaves. The prevalence of pyrrolidines in bioactive compounds has led to much interest in the development of flouropyrrolidine building blocks. The... 

Among the difficult (and sometimes referred to as sensitive ) chromatographic separations, those of enantiomeric antipodes and racemic mixtures are of particularly great importance and of the highest interest. This is because many compounds with a therapeutic effect (and incomparably more often the synthetic species than the natural ones) appear in a clearly defined enantiomeric form and for reasons of safety, need to be isolated from their opposite counterparts. Most phar-macodynamically active compounds are equipped with polar functionalities that make them interact with biological receptors and with the other constituents of a biological environment, and it often happens that these functionahties are of the AB type. In such cases, it can be justly concluded that an almost proverbial difficulty... 

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