Targeting disease with benzoxazoles: a comprehensive review of recent developments

Benzoxazole is an attractive scaffold in medicinal chemistry due to its diverse biological applications. From 2016 to 2023, a plethora of benzoxazole derivatives have been synthesized and evaluated for their pharmacological activities but a review on this topic was found lacking. This review thus aims to fill the gap and discusses the pharmacological activities of the synthesized derivatives, emphasizing their interactions with key biological targets implicated in diseases such as cancer, diabetes, pain, inflammation, and cardiovascular disorders. Relevant works were selected mainly from databases such as PubMed and Google Scholar to offer a comprehensive overview of derivatives with promising bioactivities. The limitations pertinent to some derivatives, such as poor in vitro or in vivo activities, were highlighted, while their prospects in drug discovery was discussed.