Preface

Abstract

The field of natural products is inevitably closely associated with organic chemistry: living organisms provide an extremely wide diversity of organic molecules. This is the first issue on "Natural Product Chemistry" in the journal "Current Organic Chemistry" and it is designed to focus on compounds in Nature which exhibit interesting biological activities. The aim is to provide an update on results in different fields of research and also to present recent advances in methodology and in the introduction of new areas of investigation. Six different chapters have been included in this issue, covering bioactive organic compounds from several different sources: from plants, fungi, marine algae and, to a lesser extent, microorganisms. Arnold Vlietinck and Dirk Vanden Berghe review the latest results concerning antiviral compounds from plants, while Lars Bohlin gives a summary of new plant-derived antiinflammatory molecules, with emphasis on platelet activating factor (PAF) antagonistic activity. In an attempt to cover an area of great potential interest which is only sparingly reported in the scientific literature, the subject of nematicidal compounds from higher fungi has been tackled by Heidrun Anke and Olov Sterner, specialists in the study of mushrooms. Marine algae are a category of organisms from the sea which are the source of many intriguing organic molecules and possible new lead compounds. Corrado Tringali has provided an insight into some of the diverse stn.Jctures which have been discovered and the associated biological activities. An important phenomenon when considering the bioactivities of natural products is the influence of light. Until recently, very few people have taken into account the fact that the presence or absence of light can have dramatic consequences on the magnitude of the activities: in certain cases, a natural product may be completely inactive in the dark. Neil Towers has devoted a large amount of research effort to this particular field and in chapter 4, he gives a lucid account of the results observed. Finally, Olivier Potterat reviews antioxidants and free radical scavengers of natural origin. Free radicals are implicated in many different physiological processes, such as aging, cancer, coronary heart disease and inflammation-related complications. For this reason, the discovery of agents which inhibit oxidative damage can lead to the development of products with important repercussions on human health. Many resources are currently being expended in this aspect of disease prevention. The contributors are all authorities in their particular fields and it is hoped that the readers will have the opportunity of keeping abreast of the most recent developments in the areas selected. Future dedicated issues of "Current Organic Chemistry" will treat other natural product subject matter in a similar fashion.