Contemporary medicinal-chemistry strategies for the discovery of selective butyrylcholinesterase inhibitors

•BChE is considered a promising drug target for the treatment of moderate to severe Alzheimer’s disease.•The development of selective BChE inhibitors will move on from trial-and-error approaches to increasingly sophisticated strategies.•The insightful application of critical molecular design elements is a very effective strategy to improve the success rates of target-based drug discovery.•New medicinal chemistry concepts and techniques can be utilized for the discovery of novel and selective BChE inhibitors.