Natural Products in Drug Discovery: Impacts and Opportunities — An Assessment

Abstract

Nature stands as an inexhaustible source of novel chemotypes and pharmacophores, and has been a source of medicinal agents for thousands of years, and an impressive number of modern drugs find their origin in natural products. Natural product chemistry has experienced explosive and diversified growth, making natural products the subject of much interest and promise in the present day research directed towards drug design and discovery. It is noteworthy that natural products are a source of new compounds with diversified structural arrangements possessing interesting biological activities. Natural products, thus, have played and continue to play an invaluable role in the drug discovery process. Recently, there has been a renewed interest in natural products research due to the failure of alternative drug discovery methods to deliver many lead compounds in key therapeutic areas such as immunosuppression, anti-infective, and metabolic diseases. However, continuing improvements in natural products research are needed to continue to be competitive with other drug discovery methods, and also to keep pace with the ongoing changes in the drug discovery process. Faithful drives are needed in a more intensified fashion to explore “Nature” as a source of novel and active agents that may serve as the leads and scaffolds for elaboration into urgently needed efficacious drugs for a multitude of disease indications. Natural products have provided considerable value to the pharmaceutical industry over the past half century. In particular, the therapeutic