Medicinal Chemistry of Fluorinated Cyclic and Acyclic Nucleoside Phosphonates

The fluorine atom plays an important role in medicinal chemistry because fluorine substitution has a strong impact on the physical, chemical, and biological properties of bioactive compounds. Such fluorine modifications have also been extensively studied among the pharmaceutically important class of nucleoside phosphonates, nucleotide analogues in which the phosphate group is replaced by the enzymatically and chemically stable phosphonate moiety. The fluorinated nucleoside phosphonates abound with antiviral, antiparasitic, and anticancer properties because they are able to act as inhibitors of important enzymes of nucleoside/nucleotide metabolism. In this paper, we review the biological properties of cyclic and acyclic nucleoside phosphonates modified by the attachment of one or more fluorine atoms to various parts of the molecule, namely to nucleobases, alkylphosphonate groups, cyclic or acyclic linkers, or to prodrug moieties.