This review highlights the rationale behind multitarget drug design as a promising approach to address diseases with complex etiologies. By combining pharmacophore features from different single-target drugs, multitarget compounds can interact with multiple biological targets simultaneously. This strategy offers improved therapeutic outcomes, reduces the likelihood of resistance, and enhances synergistic or additive effects compared to traditional single-target approaches.

Many of the drugs used in treatment today have been designed based on the “specificity paradigm”. Resistance has developed against drugs designed using this approach, leading to a decrease in their effectiveness. In addition, it is well-documented in the literature that diseases with complex etiologies, such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and cancer are influenced by multiple genetic and/or environmental factors. As a result, specificity paradigm is often insufficient for treating these diseases. Therefore, there is a need to develop drugs that interact with multiple targets simultaneously through different mechanisms. This review aims to provide an overview of the methods used in multitarget drug design, the reactions employed in the synthesis of these drugs, their applications, and recent research conducted in this field.