Roles of Fluorine in Drug Design and Drug Action

The article discusses the basic properties of fluorine atom that have made it so useful in drug development. It presents several examples of therapeutically useful drugs acting against many life-threatening diseases along with the mechanism as to how fluorine influences the drug activity. It has been pointed out that fluorine, due to its ability to increase the lipophilicity of the molecule, greatly affects the hydrophobic interaction between the drug molecule and the receptor. Because of its small size, it hardly produces any steric effect, rather due to electronic properties enters into electrostatic and hydrogen-bond interactions. Thus, it greatly affects the drug-receptor interaction and leads to increase the activity of the drugs.