Spirocyclic Scaffolds in Drug Discovery

Although spirocycles have been incorporated into drugs and explored in drug discovery for over five decades, recent years have seen a greater variety and number of spirocycles employed in drug discovery. This increase has been driven by improved synthetic methods, the quest for novel intellectual property, and the desirable, intrinsically three-dimensional nature of spirocycles. In this article, we discuss the conformational analysis of spirocycles, spirocyclic drugs, and selected examples of spirocyclic compounds from the medicinal chemistry literature.