Recent applications of vinyl sulfone motif in drug design and discovery

Vinyl sulfone with electrophilic character is not only a versatile building block for various organic transformations but also is a key structural unit in a large number of biologically active molecules. In the recent decades vinyl sulfone has attracted much attention due to its potential as a privileged structural motif in medicinal chemistry for the drug discovery and development. It can be found in the chemical structure of many leads and drug candidates such as Rigosertib, Recilisib, K11777, WRR-483 and BAY 11-7085. The vinyl sulfone motif has been especially used in the design of chemotherapeutics and neuroprotective as well as radioprotective agents. In this review, we have described design, chemical structures, biological properties and related mechanism of actions, and structure activity relationship (SAR) study of vinyl sulfone-based compounds.