Advancement in Epilepsy Pharmacotherapy: An Insight into the Pharmacophoric Approaches of Recent Drugs

Epilepsy is the most general, extensive, and severe neurological disorder, affecting more than 50 million individuals globally. Initially, conventional medicines and simple salts like potassium bromide were employed as antiepileptic medication candidates. Nowadays, large number of anticonvulsant drugs have been discovered as first-generati, second-generation and newer drugs which are still in development phases. The pharmacophore-based drug design process includes pharmacophore modeling and validation, pharmacophore-based virtual screening, virtual hits profiling, and lead identification with special to epilepsy. This comprehensive article reviews recently developed anticonvulsant derivatives on the basis of pharmacophoric approaches. A literature survey was performed using various search engines like Google Scholar, Scopus, Sci Finder, ScienceDirect, Science gate, Scilit, PubMed, NINDS database of NIH, Bentham Sciences, and other online and print journals and scientific databases for compilation of this review article. The presented review discusses newer drugs that are in the market as well as in various clinical trial phases. Detailed outcomes of pharmacophoric modeling have been discussed for newly derived derivatives like targets involved in Epilepsy, lead molecules etc., for the treatment of epilepsy. This exhaustive review will assist the researchers in the further development of potential antiepileptic agents.