Recent Work on the Synthesis of Phosphonate-containing, Bone-active Heterocycles

New approaches to the design and synthesis of bone antiresorptive phosphonates have led to the discovery of the cyclic bisphophonate series and the phosphonoalkylphosphinate heterocyclic series. The latter class, which offers substrates for interesting dianion chemistry, has been shown to include effective bone-active isosteres of the well-known bisphosphonates.