Photochemical studies on drug molecules and related substances

Abstract

The thesis entitled Photochemical studies on drug molecules and related substances, describes photochemical studies on drug molecules and related substances and the study of ensuing photochemical processes and mechanisms. Certain drugs are able to produce phototoxicity side effects that are undesired adverse cutaneous reactions that appear as a consequence of the combined action of drugs and sunlight in the treated patients. The variety in molecular structure of phototoxic drugs is immense and almost all classes of drug compounds contain members with adverse photobiological effects. Also, photochemical degradation, by various procedures, including photooxidation, is likely to be an important loss and toxicity mechanism for many drugs and pharmaceuticals in biosystem, and this is of great significance to environmental photochemistry and photobiology. Natural products have served as tools and leads for the development of new drugs and several natural compounds from plants and animal kingdom are now useful drugs. Moreover, plenty of plant materials for their biologically active principal have proved to be of potential medicinal value. Singlet oxygen, a potential product of photochemical reactions of many compounds is a damaging agent to all living organisms, and also plays a very significant role in plant metabolism. Photosensitizing reactions among secondary plant products is a wide spread phenomenon involving ultra-violet as well as visible light. Secondary plant substrates of diverse biogenetic origin are capable of the photogenerating singlet oxygen, and they also act as quenchers of singlet oxygen, suggesting the wide spread use of these as potent toxic, protective and defensive agents. Thus, photochemical studies on drugs and promising drug molecules is an area of vital importance in current medicinal chemistry, for establishing a relation to its newlinephototoxicity. A satisfactory understanding of this phenomenon requires a detailed knowledge of the photochemistry of such molecules.