Differentiation of antiinflammatory and antitumorigenic properties of stabilized enantiomers of thalidomide analogs.

Therapeutics developed and sold as racemates can exhibit a limited therapeutic index because of side effects resulting from the undesired enantiomer (distomer) and/or its metabolites, which at times, forces researchers to abandon valuable scaffolds. Therefore, most chiral drugs are developed as single enantiomers. Unfortunately, the development of some chirally pure drug molecules is hampered by rapid in vivo racemization.