The structural aspects of carbapenem antibiotics

The discovery of thienamycin in 1976 caused much synthetic research effort to be concentrated on carbapenem antibiotics, by many groups. To date, two carbapenems, which need to be coadministered with other drugs, and then a n ew generation carbapenem, which could be utilized as a single agent, were d eveloped for clinical use based on the progress of synthetic chemistry. Tod ay, attention has been focused on the development of next generation carbap enem antibiotics. These trends of the carbapenem antibiotics developed in l ast quarter century are reviewed from a viewpoint of their chemical structu res.