ABSTRACT
Tuberculosis remains a major threat to mankind, becoming more deadly due to COVID-19 pandemic. The worldwide scenario is daunted by additional factors such as drug resistance, non-adherence and complexity of the treatment. To overcome these obstacles, there is a constant need for novel drug development. However, drug development is an extensive process in itself requiring enormous financial investment and is time-consuming with a low success rate. A viable alternative to circumvent these complications is to explore ‘privileged scaffold/s’. Further logical approaches would be to study the privileged scaffold/s which materialize in the clinical pipeline of the disease. The present review summarizes clinically important privileged scaffolds explored in tuberculosis, namely, aryl quinolines, nitroheterocycles and oxazolidinones. Various developmental aspects have been reviewed along with the structural, pharmacological and physicochemical investigations as may be relevant. The understandings gained would thereby help in envisaging suitable structural modifications of these scaffolds for development of promising leads. © 2022 Indian Drug Manufacturers' Association. All rights reserved.