β-Lactam antibiotics

Among the penicillins, cephalosporins and other beta -lactam antibiotics, there are more than 50 different compounds now in clinical use or at an advanced stage of evaluation. Many of these compounds have very similar properties, and also similar sounding names, but in other cases the properties are very different indeed. The purpose of this article is to present in one document a register of the names and structures of the beta -lactams which are in clinical use, or at the stage of clinical trial, together with the main biological properties of these compounds both antibacterial and pharmacokinetic.