Development of drugs based on Benzimidazole Heterocycle: Recent advancement and insights

Benzimidazole rings are the most important nitrogen-containing heterocycles, which are widely explored and utilized by the pharmaceutical industry for drug discovery. Due to their special structural features and electron-rich environment, Benzimidazole containing drugs bind to a variety of therapeutic targets, thereby exhibiting a broad spectrum of bioactivities. Numerous benzimidazole based drugs have been extensively used in the clinic to treat various types of diseases with high therapeutic potential. Benzimidazole derivatives play important role in medical field with so many Pharmacological activities such as antimicrobial, antiviral, antidiabetic and anticancer activity. The potency of these clinically useful drugs in treatment of microbial infections and other activities encouraged the development of some more potent and significant compounds. Benzimidazoles are remarkably effective compounds, extensive biochemical and pharmacological studies have confirmed that these molecules are effective against various strains of microorganisms. Due to their enormous medicinal value, the research and development of benzimidazole-containing drugs is an increasingly active and attractive topic of medicinal chemistry. This review enlightens about the chemistry of different derivatives of substituted benzimidazoles along with their pharmacological activities. Furthermore, the present review also provides the recent advances in the development of benzimidazole-based drugs along with new perspectives. We hope that this paper will open up new opportunities for researchers to design future generation novel and potent benzimidazole containing drugs.