ReviewNature reviews. Drug discovery2018
The expanding role of prodrugs in contemporary drug design and development.
Review in Nature reviews. Drug discovery, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 264 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
264 citing papers in PubMed.
- Advancing PROTAC therapeutics through chemistry-guided design of smart delivery systems.Acta pharmacologica Sinica · 2026Review
- Soft drugs: design principles and topical applications.Nature reviews. Drug discovery · 2026Review
- Do We Still Need Chemistry for Water-Soluble Prodrugs? What Biocatalysis Already Does, and What It Does Not.Pharmaceutics · 2026Review
- Insights From Spatiality: Accelerating Pharmaceutical Research Using Mass Spectrometry Imaging.Medicinal research reviews · 2026Review
- The effect of pH stability and aqueous solubility on the oral bioavailability of a novel antileishmanial agent.European journal of pharmaceutical sciences : official journal of the European Federation for Pharmaceutical Sciences · 2026Article
- Charged molecular glue discovery enabled by targeted degron display.Nature chemical biology · 2026Article
- Sanger's Reagent-Mediated Prodrug for Light-Controlled Release of Camptothecin With Fluorescent Indication.Chembiochem : a European journal of chemical biology · 2026Article
- Nanoparticles for antiviral nucleotide analogs: approaches and analytical challenges.Journal of virology · 2026Review
- From probe to prodrug: immunoproteasome activity as a trigger for disease-selective therapeutics.Signal transduction and targeted therapy · 2026Article
- Cancer drug response and resistance: molecular mechanisms and combating strategies.Signal transduction and targeted therapy · 2026Review
- Chondroitin Sulfate-Based Self-Assembling Nanoprodrug for Controlled Methotrexate Delivery in Cancer Therapy.Molecules (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Image-guided activation of drugs with electromagnetic radiation.Nature chemical biology · 2026Review
- A Prodrug Approach for Activity-Based Chemical Modulation toward Multiple Pathological Targets in Alzheimer's Disease.Small (Weinheim an der Bergstrasse, Germany) · 2026Article
- A Cascade-Activatable Prodrug Nanomedicine for Photothermally Augmented in Situ Synergistic Chemo/Chemodynamic Therapy.Small (Weinheim an der Bergstrasse, Germany) · 2026Article
- Prevalence and Prognostic Role of Nutrition Impact Symptoms in Patients With Gastrointestinal Cancer: A Multicenter Cohort Study.In vivo (Athens, Greece) · 2026Article
- Clinical translation and landscape of stimuli-responsive nanomedicines and microscale therapeutics.Chemical Society reviews · 2026Review
- Overcoming Pharmacokinetic and Peripheral Safety Challenges in Psychedelic Therapies: The Promise of Advanced Drug Delivery Systems.ACS pharmacology & translational science · 2026Review
- Solubility-Driven Lead Optimization of PAR4 Antagonists and Evaluation of a Phosphate Ester Prodrug Delivery Strategy.ACS medicinal chemistry letters · 2026Article
- Multimodal Multiorgan-on-a-Chip Platform for Probing Liver-Tumor Interactions and Advancing Prodrug Screening.Advanced science (Weinheim, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany) · 2026Article
- Fatty Acids in Cancer Therapy: Chemical Conjugates, Nanocarriers, and Therapeutic Opportunities.Molecules (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Review
204 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Prodrugs are molecules with little or no pharmacological activity that are converted to the active parent drug in vivo by enzymatic or chemical reactions or by a combination of the two. Prodrugs have evolved from being serendipitously discovered or used as a salvage effort to being intentionally designed. Such efforts can avoid drug development challenges that limit formulation options or result in unacceptable biopharmaceutical or pharmacokinetic performance, or poor targeting. In the past 10 years, the US Food and Drug Administration has approved at least 30 prodrugs, which accounts for more than 12% of all approved small-molecule new chemical entities. In this Review, we highlight prodrug design strategies for improved formulation and pharmacokinetic and targeting properties, with a focus on the most recently marketed prodrugs. We also discuss preclinical and clinical challenges and considerations in prodrug design and development.
Indexed as
Identifiers
29700501What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.