Advances in studies on collagenase inhibitors.

Matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) play an important role in many physiological and pathological processes. Development of MMP inhibitors, in particular collagenase inhibitors, for the treatment of arthritis has been more challenging, undoubtedly. Small-molecular-weight collagenase inhibitors may be classified into several different arbitrary structural classes, depending on the catalytic zinc-binding function as well as other structural elements of the inhibitors. This chapter tries to make an attempt in providing the reader with an overall flavor of the type of scaffolds reported in the past few years along with the molecular modeling studies.