scholarly journals Natural product drug discovery in the artificial intelligence era

2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fernanda I Saldivar-Gonzalez ◽  
Victor Daniel Aldas-Bulos ◽  
José Luis Medina-Franco ◽  
Fabien Plisson

Natural products (NPs) are primarily recognized as privileged structures to interact with protein drug targets. Their unique characteristics and structural diversity continue to marvel scientists for developing NP-inspired medicines, even...

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giang Nguyen ◽  
Jack Bennett ◽  
Sherrie Liu ◽  
Sarah Hancock ◽  
Daniel Winter ◽  
...  

The structural diversity of natural products offers unique opportunities for drug discovery, but challenges associated with their isolation and screening can hinder the identification of drug-like molecules from complex natural product extracts. Here we introduce a mass spectrometry-based approach that integrates untargeted metabolomics with multistage, high-resolution native mass spectrometry to rapidly identify natural products that bind to therapeutically relevant protein targets. By directly screening crude natural product extracts containing thousands of drug-like small molecules using a single, rapid measurement, novel natural product ligands of human drug targets could be identified without fractionation. This method should significantly increase the efficiency of target-based natural product drug discovery workflows.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giang Nguyen ◽  
Jack Bennett ◽  
Sherrie Liu ◽  
Sarah Hancock ◽  
Daniel Winter ◽  
...  

The structural diversity of natural products offers unique opportunities for drug discovery, but challenges associated with their isolation and screening can hinder the identification of drug-like molecules from complex natural product extracts. Here we introduce a mass spectrometry-based approach that integrates untargeted metabolomics with multistage, high-resolution native mass spectrometry to rapidly identify natural products that bind to therapeutically relevant protein targets. By directly screening crude natural product extracts containing thousands of drug-like small molecules using a single, rapid measurement, novel natural product ligands of human drug targets could be identified without fractionation. This method should significantly increase the efficiency of target-based natural product drug discovery workflows.


Molecules ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 24 (22) ◽  
pp. 4165 ◽  
Author(s):  
Evgeny Chupakhin ◽  
Olga Babich ◽  
Alexander Prosekov ◽  
Lyudmila Asyakina ◽  
Mikhail Krasavin

Spirocyclic motifs are emerging privileged structures for drug discovery. They are also omnipresent in the natural products domain. However, until today, no attempt to analyze the structural diversity of various spirocyclic motifs occurring in natural products and their relative populations with unique compounds reported in the literature has been undertaken. This review aims to fill that void and analyze the diversity of structurally unique natural products containing spirocyclic moieties of various sizes.


Author(s):  
Himangini Bansal ◽  
Rajeev K. Singla ◽  
Sahar Behzad ◽  
Hitesh Chopra ◽  
Ajmer S. Grewal ◽  
...  

: The natural product specialized metabolites produced by microbes and plants are the backbone of our current drugs. Ironically, we are in a golden age of understanding natural product biosynthesis, biochemistry, and engineering. These advances have the potential to usher in a new era of natural product exploration and development, taking full advantage of the unique and favorable properties of natural product compounds in drug discovery. There is now an increasing realization that these privileged structures represent the optimal starting point for the development of clinically viable assets. Here, we outline the current state-of-the-art in antimicrobial natural product drug discovery, specifically Streptomyces species, with a specific focus on how the emerging field of synthetic biology is delivering the tools and technologies required to unlock the therapeutic potential of natural products. We illustrate how these approaches are circumventing many of the problems that have historically plagued conventional screening programs, enabling the expedient discovery of new molecules with novel functions.


2003 ◽  
Vol 2003 (4) ◽  
pp. 237-241 ◽  
Author(s):  
Guru Reddy ◽  
Enrique A. Dalmasso

Predictive medicine, utilizing the ProteinChip®Array technology, will develop through the implementation of novel biomarkers and multimarker patterns for detecting disease, determining patient prognosis, monitoring drug effects such as efficacy or toxicity, and for defining treatment options. These biomarkers may also serve as novel protein drug candidates or protein drug targets. In addition, the technology can be used for discovering small molecule drugs or for defining their mode of action utilizing protein-based assays. In this review, we describe the following applications of the ProteinChip Array technology: (1) discovery and identification of novel inhibitors of HIV-1 replication, (2) serum and tissue proteome analysis for the discovery and development of novel multimarker clinical assays for prostate, breast, ovarian, and other cancers, and (3) biomarker and drug discovery applications for neurological disorders.


Molecules ◽  
2022 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 349
Author(s):  
Asim Najmi ◽  
Sadique A. Javed ◽  
Mohammed Al Bratty ◽  
Hassan A. Alhazmi

Natural products represents an important source of new lead compounds in drug discovery research. Several drugs currently used as therapeutic agents have been developed from natural sources; plant sources are specifically important. In the past few decades, pharmaceutical companies demonstrated insignificant attention towards natural product drug discovery, mainly due to its intrinsic complexity. Recently, technological advancements greatly helped to address the challenges and resulted in the revived scientific interest in drug discovery from natural sources. This review provides a comprehensive overview of various approaches used in the selection, authentication, extraction/isolation, biological screening, and analogue development through the application of modern drug-development principles of plant-based natural products. Main focus is given to the bioactivity-guided fractionation approach along with associated challenges and major advancements. A brief outline of historical development in natural product drug discovery and a snapshot of the prominent natural drugs developed in the last few decades are also presented. The researcher’s opinions indicated that an integrated interdisciplinary approach utilizing technological advances is necessary for the successful development of natural products. These involve the application of efficient selection method, well-designed extraction/isolation procedure, advanced structure elucidation techniques, and bioassays with a high-throughput capacity to establish druggability and patentability of phyto-compounds. A number of modern approaches including molecular modeling, virtual screening, natural product library, and database mining are being used for improving natural product drug discovery research. Renewed scientific interest and recent research trends in natural product drug discovery clearly indicated that natural products will play important role in the future development of new therapeutic drugs and it is also anticipated that efficient application of new approaches will further improve the drug discovery campaign.


2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (6) ◽  
Author(s):  
Eleni Koulouridi ◽  
Marilia Valli ◽  
Fidele Ntie-Kang ◽  
Vanderlan da Silva Bolzani

Abstract Databases play an important role in various computational techniques, including virtual screening (VS) and molecular modeling in general. These collections of molecules can contain a large amount of information, making them suitable for several drug discovery applications. For example, vendor, bioactivity data or target type can be found when searching a database. The introduction of these data resources and their characteristics is used for the design of an experiment. The description of the construction of a database can also be a good advisor for the creation of a new one. There are free available databases and commercial virtual libraries of molecules. Furthermore, a computational chemist can find databases for a general purpose or a specific subset such as natural products (NPs). In this chapter, NP database resources are presented, along with some guidelines when preparing an NP database for drug discovery purposes.


Biomolecules ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 31 ◽  
Author(s):  
B. Pilón-Jiménez ◽  
Fernanda Saldívar-González ◽  
Bárbara Díaz-Eufracio ◽  
José Medina-Franco

Compound databases of natural products have a major impact on drug discovery projects and other areas of research. The number of databases in the public domain with compounds with natural origins is increasing. Several countries, Brazil, France, Panama and, recently, Vietnam, have initiatives in place to construct and maintain compound databases that are representative of their diversity. In this proof-of-concept study, we discuss the first version of BIOFACQUIM, a novel compound database with natural products isolated and characterized in Mexico. We discuss its construction, curation, and a complete chemoinformatic characterization of the content and coverage in chemical space. The profile of physicochemical properties, scaffold content, and diversity, as well as structural diversity based on molecular fingerprints is reported. BIOFACQUIM is available for free.


Molecules ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 24 (12) ◽  
pp. 2233 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michele Montaruli ◽  
Domenico Alberga ◽  
Fulvio Ciriaco ◽  
Daniela Trisciuzzi ◽  
Anna Rita Tondo ◽  
...  

In this continuing work, we have updated our recently proposed Multi-fingerprint Similarity Search algorithm (MuSSel) by enabling the generation of dominant ionized species at a physiological pH and the exploration of a larger data domain, which included more than half a million high-quality small molecules extracted from the latest release of ChEMBL (version 24.1, at the time of writing). Provided with a high biological assay confidence score, these selected compounds explored up to 2822 protein drug targets. To improve the data accuracy, samples marked as prodrugs or with equivocal biological annotations were not considered. Notably, MuSSel performances were overall improved by using an object-relational database management system based on PostgreSQL. In order to challenge the real effectiveness of MuSSel in predicting relevant therapeutic drug targets, we analyzed a pool of 36 external bioactive compounds published in the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry from October to December 2018. This study demonstrates that the use of highly curated chemical and biological experimental data on one side, and a powerful multi-fingerprint search algorithm on the other, can be of the utmost importance in addressing the fate of newly conceived small molecules, by strongly reducing the attrition of early phases of drug discovery programs.


2020 ◽  
Vol 37 (11) ◽  
pp. 1436-1453 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathanyal J. Truax ◽  
Daniel Romo

Various synthetic strategies have been developed to explore natural products as an enduring source of chemical information useful for probing biological relevant chemical space and impacting drug discovery.


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