A Historical Overview of Natural Products in Drug Discovery

TLDR

Natural products have been used since ancient times, and modern chemistry has uncovered a vast array of bioactive secondary metabolites from terrestrial and marine sources that have become current drug candidates. This review aims to highlight historically significant bioactive marine and terrestrial natural products and their use in folklore and dereplication techniques to facilitate rapid discovery. The review discusses how natural product chemistry has identified many drug candidates, the application of advanced hyphenated spectroscopic techniques, future directions, and the adoption of metabolomic profiling and dereplication approaches for comprehensive study of natural product extracts.

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.