Bifunctional drugs for the treatment of asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease

Over the last decade, there has been a steady increase in the use of fixed-dose combinations of drugs for the treatment of a range of diseases, including hypertension, cancer, AIDS, tuberculosis and other infectious diseases. It is now evident that patients with asthma or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) can also benefit from the use of fixed-dose combinations, including combinations of a long-acting β2-agonist and an inhaled corticosteroid, and combinations of long-acting β2-agonists and long-acting muscarinic receptor antagonists. In fact, there are now a number of "triple-inhaler" fixed-dose combinations under development, with the first such triple combination having been approved in India. This use of combinations containing drugs with complementary pharmacological actions in the treatment of patients with asthma or COPD has also led to the discovery and development of drugs having two different primary pharmacological actions in the same molecule, which we have called "bifunctional drugs". In this review, we discuss the state of the art of these new bifunctional drugs as novel treatments for asthma and COPD that can be categorised as bifunctional bronchodilators, bifunctional bronchodilator/anti-inflammatory drugs and bifunctional anti-inflammatory drugs.