Recent advances in monoamine oxidase B inhibitors design

Monoamine oxidase B (MAO-B) inhibitors are accepted for the treatment of psychiatric and neurodegenerative disorders. Further applications such as antiapoptotic, neuroprotective, antiobesity, and smoking-cessation agents are under investigation and open new therapeutic perspectives for this class of compounds. New structural studies and crystallographic models provide more insight into the catalytic mechanism of the enzyme and the structural properties essential for selective inhibition. Several compounds show good inhibitory activity. Both structure-based and ligand-based computational studies have been successfully carried out to understand and predict the inhibitory potential of MAO-B selective ligands.