Living on pyrrolic foundations - Advances in natural and artificial bioactive pyrrole derivatives

Abstract Pyrrole, a simple heterocyclic system, is an important building block for numerous biologically active compounds both natural and synthetic in origin, which boast an immense array of qualities, baleful and beneficial alike. The latter have given rise to a bountiful variety of pyrrole-based drugs, with many more being designed, developed and applied each year, as evidenced by the amount of entries in the Cambridge Structural Database skyrocketing from about six hundred in 2004 to more than a thousand over the course of the last decade. Particularly important in light of the ever-encroaching menace of drug-resistant bacteria, the vast progress in the field necessitates a sound organisational framework and summary - a task, to which we contribute this summary and checklist of the most recent developments, indicating the classes of compounds, which have attracted the most significant research attention.