The importance of sulfur-containing motifs in drug design and discovery.

Given its prominent role in medicinal chemistry and its importance in drug discovery, sulfur has attracted continuing interest and has been used in the design of various valuable compounds that demonstrate a variety of biological and pharmacological feature activities. Overall, sulfur's role in medicinal chemistry continues to grow. However, many sulfur functionalities remain underused in small-molecule drug discovery and deserve special attention in the armamentarium for treating diverse diseases. Research efforts are also still required for the development of a synthetic methodology for direct access to these functions and late-stage functionalization.