A Historical Overview of Natural Products in Drug Discovery

Abstract

Historically, natural products have been used since ancient times and in folklore for the treatment of many diseases and illnesses. Classical natural product chemistry methodologies enabled a vast array of bioactive secondary metabolites from terrestrial and marine sources to be discovered. Many of these natural products have gone on to become current drug candidates. This brief review aims to highlight historically significant bioactive marine and terrestrial natural products, their use in folklore and dereplication techniques to rapidly facilitate their discovery. Furthermore a discussion of how natural product chemistry has resulted in the identification of many drug candidates; the application of advanced hyphenated spectroscopic techniques to aid in their discovery, the future of natural product chemistry and finally adopting metabolomic profiling and dereplication approaches for the comprehensive study of natural product extracts will be discussed.

Study of the Antifungal Activity of Shikonin and Alcoholic – Oily Extracts of Iranian Arnebia euchroma L

“…Type and amount of the metabolites in different parts of plants vary based on ecological conditions. 1,15 European and developed countries are in a period of transition to production of herbal drugs. It has been proven that high dose of these drugs has no adverse effect on human.…”

“…All the experiments were repeated 3 times. 14,15 Determination of MIC and MFC The Broth microdilution was applied to determine the MIC. In a 96-well plate, 22 wells contained Sabouraud-Dextrose broth.…”

Immunomodulators: Role of medicinal plants in immune system

“…[1] Around 122 chemicals derived from plants have been identified as therapeutic substances which are also used in commercial drugs, for example, bark of willow tree is very rich in salicylic acid, which is also an active metabolite of aspirin, and this bark has been used from ancient times as a pain killer and antipyretic substance. [2] Some of the drugs which are frequently used by the physicians are also derived from plant sources, for example, aspirin, digoxin, quinine and opium, etc. [2] They have a long history of use as herbal drug.…”

“…[2] Some of the drugs which are frequently used by the physicians are also derived from plant sources, for example, aspirin, digoxin, quinine and opium, etc. [2] They have a long history of use as herbal drug. Currently, there is much growing interest to use these medicinal plants as modulators of the complex immune system.…”

Transient Virus Expression Systems for Recombinant Protein Expression in Dicot- and Monocotyledonous Plants

“…Indeed, greater than four billion people utilize plants to meet their primary health care [1][2]. There are >120 distinct drugs derived from plant sources representing >70% of the approved drugs in the past 20 years [3,4].…”