Chapter 29. Natural Products Research and Pharmaceuticals in the 1990's

Abstract

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses the natural product drugs and development compounds in the 1990s and the factors influencing the direction of natural products research in the pharmaceutical industry. The nature of natural products research in the pharmaceutical industry, however, has embarked on a process of change that may turn out to be both rapid and radical. Examination of lists of top-selling drugs for 1994 and 1995 reveals a number of natural products and natural product derivatives. The discovery of cyclosporin A, clavulanic acid, mevinolin, and ivermectin stimulated an expansion of the natural products-based drug discovery efforts in the pharmaceutical industry in the 1980s. Natural products continue to be important in terms of compounds introduced for human therapeutic use in the 1990s. Some of these compounds have been and continue to be developed as anti-neoplastic agents or immunosuppressants. In terms of anti-neoplastic agents, the 1990s have been particularly significant for plant products. The 1990s have also seen many pharmaceutical companies turning to other sources of chemical diversity to satisfy their high throughput screening capacities and requirements for short discovery project timelines. Natural product screening appears to be viewed in some quarters as a slow and costly way of finding lead candidates and combinatorial synthetic approaches are seen as an attractive and rapid alternative for accessing chemical diversity. There are, however, exciting developments in the field of natural products, particularly in terms of new technologies providing faster routes to compound purification and identification, increasing awareness of biodiversity and the limited extent to which it has so far been explored for useful compounds, and the prospects offered by molecular biology to produce new natural products.