Hydrazine: A Source of Pharmaceutically Bioactive Drugs

Hydrazine-containing drugs are of immense importance in drug design and pharmaceutical research. Many structurally diverse hydrazine analogs such as isoniazid, nitrofurazone, nifurtimox, procarbazine, selinexor, hydralazine, rimonabant, benserazide, phenelzine, isocarboxazid, carbidopa, cadralazine, and clopamide show a landscape of fascinating therapeutic properties including antitubercular, antimicrobial, anticancer, vasodilator, antidepressant, antiobesity, anti-parkinsonian and many more to mention. Due to the importance of the hydrazine moiety, many scientists have synthesized compounds comprising N-N bond and evaluated their therapeutic activity. It would be interesting to note that hydrazine is a highly reactive nucleophilic reagent, which reacts with different functional groups, including ketones, aldehydes, carboxylic acids, acyl halides, alkyl halides/other electrophilic alkylating reagents and many other to ultimately generate an array of functional groups such as hydrazones, hydrazines, acyl hydrazides, semicarbazides, etc. Additionally, hydrazines is a very convenient reducing agent. The combination of suitable, convenient, and reactive organic reagents as well as the presence of it in many pharmaceutically active drugs, enable it to be widely used moiety in the drug design and development processes. We have reviewed its role in the pharmaceutical industry in the development of various drugs. © 2023 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.