Economic and competitive pressures provide incentives for increased speed and effectiveness in the drug discovery and design processes within the pharmaceutical industry. Consequently, it is crucial that the information content in each step of the research process is optimized. To be able to obtain the optimal information content from in vivo and in vitro preclinical studies of chiral drugs, the enantiopure stereoisomers should be used as early as possible. This will be demonstrated by three examples from a project aimed at the development of novel dopaminergic and serotonergic agents. Access to pharmacological data on enantiopure compounds also provides vital information in the design process since 1. it helps to validate existing models and 2. it may be useful in the refinement of models.
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