The discovery of novel and improved drugs, albeit essential, has a high environmental cost due to the increasing population and damage caused by industrial pharmaceutical production. As the issue of climate change grows more critical than ever, the development of environmentally friendly methods is one of the hottest research areas in every step of drug discovery. Besides being a set of rules, green or sustainable chemistry defines a chemical process's viability, from design to production. Less wasteful methods, measured by the so-called E-factor, are pursued by many pharmaceutical producers who are redesigning their chemical processes based on the 12 principles of green chemistry. Approaches including atom-efficient methods, safer or solvent-free systems, use of degradable chemicals and other techniques, can reduce the environmental footprint, energy and resource consumption in the drug discovery process, and eventually benefit the environment and economy.

However, green chemistry has not fully embraced the area of drug discovery. Petroleum continues to be the primary source of all organic chemicals. Despite resistance to altering already developed processes, appreciation of the profits that greener methods can offer may encourage progress in this direction. Thus, as the need for environmentally benign methods increases; research in this area has yet a lot to offer. Since drug discovery improves the quality of life globally, green chemistry is a valuable tool of growing importance. Therefore, a Research Topic that would focus on all chemical aspects of developing bioactive compounds based on green chemistry principles would be a worthwhile guide for researchers in this field.

This Research Topic's scope is the latest research advances of green synthesis applications to discover drugs and cover promising, recent, and novel trends. On this basis, novel approaches towards known drugs or pharmacophoric scaffolds, new techniques and reagents, are only some of the subjects we welcome, in the form of Original Research, Perspectives and Review articles. Examples of themes to be covered include, but not limited to, are:

• Synthetic routes to develop bioactive compounds, key-intermediates or pharmacophoric scaffolds with good atom economy and low carbon footprint
• Transformations in green solvents or no solvents
• Ultrasound for drug synthesis
• Flow chemistry for the synthesis of pharmacophoric scaffolds or pharmaceutical ingredients
• Novel green chemistry practices in the pharmaceutical industry
• Recyclable or degradable reagents for safe transformations
• Computational approaches to improve green synthesis

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Frontiers in Chemistry

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