Detlef Wollweber

Chloronicotinyl Insecticides: A Success of the New Chemistry

The insecticide world market, worth about 7 billion at the beginning of the 1990s, has long been dominated by old and well-established products belonging to the organophosphate, carbamate, and organochlorine classes and the newer class of pyrethroids. All these commercially important insecticides act at targets in the central nervous system and were responsible for more than 85% of worldwide insecticide sales. Inhibitors of the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor, the target of chloronicotinyl insecticides, were represented by earlier products like nicotine itself or nereistoxin analogs without any real commercial relevance at that time (Figure 1).