scholarly journals Natural Products Are a Promising Source for Anthelmintic Drug Discovery

Biomolecules ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (10) ◽  
pp. 1457
Author(s):  
K. L. T. Dilrukshi Jayawardene ◽  
Enzo A. Palombo ◽  
Peter R. Boag

Parasitic nematodes infect almost all forms of life. In the human context, parasites are one of the major causative factors for physical and intellectual growth retardation in the developing world. In the agricultural setting, parasites have a great economic impact through a reduction in livestock performance or control cost. The main method of controlling these devastating conditions is the use of anthelmintic drugs. Unfortunately, there are only a few anthelmintic drug classes available in the market and significant resistance has developed in most of the parasitic species of livestock. Therefore, development of new anthelmintics with different modes of action is critical for sustainable parasitic control in the future. The drug development pipeline is broadly limited to two types of molecules, namely synthetic compounds and natural plant products. Compared to synthetic compounds, natural products are highly diverse, and many have historically proven valuable in folk medicine to treat various gastrointestinal ailments. This review focus on the use of traditional knowledge-based plant extracts in the development of new therapeutic leads, the approaches used as screening techniques, and common bottlenecks and opportunities in plant-based anthelmintic drug discovery.

2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Joelle Ngo Hanna ◽  
Boris D. Bekono ◽  
Luc C. O. Owono ◽  
Flavien A. A. Toze ◽  
James A. Mbah ◽  
...  

Abstract In the quest to know why natural products (NPs) have often been considered as privileged scaffolds for drug discovery purposes, many investigations into the differences between NPs and synthetic compounds have been carried out. Several attempts to answer this question have led to the investigation of the atomic composition, scaffolds and functional groups (FGs) of NPs, in comparison with synthetic drugs analysis. This chapter briefly describes an atomic enumeration method for chemical libraries that has been applied for the analysis of NP libraries, followed by a description of the main differences between NPs of marine and terrestrial origin in terms of their general physicochemical properties, most common scaffolds and “drug-likeness” properties. The last parts of the work describe an analysis of scaffolds and FGs common in NP libraries, focusing on huge NP databases, e.g. those in the Dictionary of Natural Products (DNP), NPs from cyanobacteria and the largest chemical class of NP – terpenoids.


Biomolecules ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (11) ◽  
pp. 1518 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ana L. Chávez-Hernández ◽  
Norberto Sánchez-Cruz ◽  
José L. Medina-Franco

Natural products and semi-synthetic compounds continue to be a significant source of drug candidates for a broad range of diseases, including coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), which is causing the current pandemic. Besides being attractive sources of bioactive compounds for further development or optimization, natural products are excellent substrates of unique substructures for fragment-based drug discovery. To this end, fragment libraries should be incorporated into automated drug design pipelines. However, public fragment libraries based on extensive collections of natural products are still limited. Herein, we report the generation and analysis of a fragment library of natural products derived from a database with more than 400,000 compounds. We also report fragment libraries of a large food chemical database and other compound datasets of interest in drug discovery, including compound libraries relevant for COVID-19 drug discovery. The fragment libraries were characterized in terms of content and diversity.


RSC Advances ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (57) ◽  
pp. 34959-34976
Author(s):  
Enas Reda Abdelaleem ◽  
Mamdouh Nabil Samy ◽  
Samar Yehia Desoukey ◽  
Miaomiao Liu ◽  
Ronald J. Quinn ◽  
...  

Marine organisms have been considered an interesting target for the discovery of different classes of secondary natural products with wide-ranging biological activities.


2018 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 186-207 ◽  
Author(s):  
Georgios Daletos ◽  
Weaam Ebrahim ◽  
Elena Ancheeva ◽  
Mona El-Neketi ◽  
Weiguo Song ◽  
...  

Background: Over the last two decades, deep-sea-derived fungi are considered to be a new source of pharmacologically active secondary metabolites for drug discovery mainly based on the underlying assumption that the uniqueness of the deep sea will give rise to equally unprecedented natural products. Indeed, up to now over 200 new metabolites have been identified from deep-sea fungi, which is in support of the statement made above. Results: This review summarizes the new and/or bioactive compounds reported from deepsea- derived fungi in the last six years (2010 – October 2016) and critically evaluates whether the data published so far really support the notion that these fungi are a promising source of new bioactive chemical entities.


2012 ◽  
Vol 183 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-7 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Komuniecki ◽  
Wen Jing Law ◽  
Aaron Jex ◽  
Peter Geldhof ◽  
John Gray ◽  
...  

2021 ◽  
Vol 19 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yassmin Isse Wehelie ◽  
Aishath Leesha Nasih ◽  
Ayaz Anwar ◽  
Ruqaiyyah Siddiqui ◽  
Sutherland Maciver ◽  
...  

: Pathogenic Acanthamoeba is responsible for causing serious eye and fatal brain infections. A successful prognosis remains elusive despite advances in chemotherapeutics and supportive care. Natural products of medicinal value remain a promising source for drug development due to their broad-spectrum antimicrobial activities. Herein, we discuss anti-Acanthamoebic properties of natural products originating from plants, marine, and microbial sources that could be exploited as potential avenue for drug discovery against infections caused by Acanthamoeba.


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