Soft drugs: design principles and topical applications.

Soft drugs are deliberately designed to undergo rapid metabolic inactivation, enhancing safety without reducing efficacy, especially in topical and systemic applications.

• Why it matters: Improving drug safety while maintaining effectiveness addresses a critical need in pharmacology, particularly for drugs with potential systemic toxicity or long-lasting effects.
• What they did: The review discusses the principles of soft drug design, clarifies its distinction from prodrugs, and highlights recent clinical successes in dermatological, inhaled, and gut-restricted therapies, emphasizing practical application insights.
• The result: This approach enables potent local activity with minimized systemic exposure and toxicity, promoting broader adoption and understanding of soft drugs in drug discovery and clinical practice.