Current drug targets for antihyperlipidemic therapy.

Elevated lipid level is supposed to be one of the main risk factors of atherosclerosis and related cardiovascular diseases and stroke (and is connected to mortality and morbidity). Therefore, lipid lowering is one of the major approaches in prevention of coronary heart diseases and stroke. Though drugs of various categories acting through different mechanisms are available in the antihyperlipidemic therapy, there are still a few problems associated with the currently available lipid lowering drugs. Therefore, medicinal chemists worldwide are designing, synthesizing and evaluating a variety of new molecules for antihyperlipidemic activity to address these problems. One of the important approaches to this is identifying new drug targets for antihyperlipidemic activity. This review summarizes nineteen recently identified and currently being exploited targets for the ongoing research by researchers world over to discover novel leads as potential drugs for antihyperlipidemic therapy.