In past decades, the pharmacopoeia was dominated by racemates, but since the emergence of new technologies in the 1990s that allowed the preparation of pure enantiomers in significant quantities, the awareness and interest in the stereochemistry of drug actions have increased. In this short review, the implementation of several hosts, guests, building blocks and methods in host-guest supramolecular chemistry was outlined with an emphasis on the synthetic aspects, catalyst libraries and molecular recognition. Solid-state host-guest interactions, intra- and intermolecular host-guest photoreactions in solution and in the solid state, molecular and supramolecular self-assembly and molecular recognition between host and guests, and some specific and important reactions, such as aldol and Michael reactions, were reviewed.
Keywords: Asymmetric, catalyst libraries, chiral auxiliary, combinatorial chemistry, host-guest, photochirogenesis, self-assembly, supramolecular