Elaborate natural products that make them appropriate in new drug discovery.
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Drug discovery leading to robust and viable lead candidates’ remains a challenging scientific task, which is the transition from a screening hit to a drug candidate, requires expertise and experience. Natural products and their derivatives have been recognized for many years as a source of therapeutic agents and of structural diversity. However, in addition to their chemical structure diversity and their biodiversity, the development of new technologies has revolutionized the screening of natural products in discovering new drugs. Applying these technologies compensates for the inherent limitations of natural products and offers a unique opportunity to re-establish natural products as a major source for drug discovery. The present article attempts to describe the utilization of compounds derived from natural resources as drug candidates, with a focus on the success of these resources in the process of finding and discovering new and effective drug compounds, an approach commonly referred to as “natural product drug discovery”.1. IntroductionNatural products, including plants, animals and minerals have been the basis of treatment of human diseases [1,2]. Nevertheless, ancient wisdom has been the basis of modern medicine and will remain as one important source of future medicine and therapeutics.History of medicine dates back practically to the existence of human civilization. Historically, the majority of new drugs have been generated from natural products (secondary metabolites) and from compounds derived from natural products [1].Before 20th century, crude and semi-pure extracts of plants, animals, microbes and minerals represented the only medications available to treat human and domestic animal illnesses. The 20th century revolutionized the thinking in the use of drugs, as the receptor theory of drug action. The idea that effect of drug in human body are mediated by specific interactions of the drug molecule with biological macromolecules (proteins or nucleic acids in most cases) led scientist to the conclusion that individual chemical compounds in extracts, rather than some mystical “power of life” are the factors required for the biological activity of the drug. This lead to the beginning of a totally new era in pharmacology, as pure, isolated chemicals, instead of extracts, became the standard treatments for diseases. Indeed, many bioactive compounds, responsible for the effects of crude extract drugs, and their chemical structure was elucidated.Classical examples of drug compounds discovered this way are morphine, the active agent in Opium, and digoxin, a heart stimulant originating from flower Digitalis lanata. The evolution in synthetic chemistry also led to chemical synthesis of many of the elucidated structures.On the other hand, the R&D thrust in the pharmaceutical sector is focused on development of new drugs, innovative/indigenous processes for known drugs and development of plant-based drugs through investigation of leads from the traditional systems of medicine [2]. The exploitation of structural chemical databases consisting of a wide variety of chemotypes, in conjunction with databases on target genes and proteins, will surely facilitate the creation of new chemical entities through computational molecular modeling for pharmacological evaluation [3].Recently, there has been a renewed interest in natural product research due to the failure of alternative drug discovery methods to deliver many lead compounds in key therapeutic areas such as immunosuppression, antiinfectives, and metabolic diseases.