Natural Products in Drug Discovery: Approaches and Development

Historically, natural products (NP’s) have played a significant role in drug discovery, not only in cancer and infectious diseases, but also in other therapeutic areas including cardiovascular diseases and multiple sclerosis. Profit and loss, Partnerships and averages, natural products also present certain challenges for drug discovery, such as technical obstacles to screening, isolation, characterization and optimization, which added to decline in their search by the pharmaceutical industry from the 1990s onwards. In recent days the applications of molecular biological techniques have increased the availability of novel compounds that can be conveniently produced in bacteria or yeast or plant sources. In addition to this, combinational chemistry approaches are being based on natural product scaffolds to create screening libraries that closely resemble drug-like compounds. Employing these technologies gives us a chance to execute research in screening new molecules by means of a software and data base to ascertain natural products as a major source for drug discovery. It lastly directs to lead structure discovery. This review discusses plant based natural product drug discovery and how innovative technologies play a role in next generation drug discovery and highlights from the published literature on plants as sources of antiinflammatory agents. GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT

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Modern Approaches in the Discovery and Development of Plant-Based Natural Products and Their Analogues as Potential Therapeutic Agents

Molecules ◽

10.3390/molecules27020349 ◽

2022 ◽

Vol 27 (2) ◽

pp. 349

Author(s):

Asim Najmi ◽

Sadique A. Javed ◽

Mohammed Al Bratty ◽

Hassan A. Alhazmi

Keyword(s):

Natural Products ◽

Drug Discovery ◽

Natural Product ◽

Therapeutic Agents ◽

Throughput Capacity ◽

Scientific Interest ◽

Comprehensive Overview ◽

Natural Sources ◽

Discovery Research ◽

Drug Discovery Research

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.

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A primer on natural product-based virtual screening

Physical Sciences Reviews ◽

10.1515/psr-2018-0105 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 4 (6) ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Eleni Koulouridi ◽

Marilia Valli ◽

Fidele Ntie-Kang ◽

Vanderlan da Silva Bolzani

Keyword(s):

Natural Products ◽

Drug Discovery ◽

Molecular Modeling ◽

Virtual Screening ◽

Natural Product ◽

General Purpose ◽

Target Type ◽

Computational Techniques ◽

Specific Subset ◽

Virtual Libraries

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.

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Bridging the gap between natural product synthesis and drug discovery

Natural Product Reports ◽

10.1039/d0np00048e ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 37 (11) ◽

pp. 1436-1453 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Nathanyal J. Truax ◽

Daniel Romo

Keyword(s):

Natural Products ◽

Drug Discovery ◽

Natural Product ◽

Chemical Space ◽

Natural Product Synthesis ◽

Chemical Information

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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Harnessing the potential of natural products in drug discovery from a cheminformatics vantage point

Organic & Biomolecular Chemistry ◽

10.1039/c7ob02193c ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 15 (44) ◽

pp. 9275-9282 ◽

Cited By ~ 18

Author(s):

Tiago Rodrigues

Keyword(s):

Natural Products ◽

Drug Discovery ◽

Natural Product ◽

Product Space ◽

Vantage Point

Cheminformatics tools provide a viable means to unravel chemistry and biology in natural product space.

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Single Crystal X-Ray Structural Determination: A Powerful Technique for Natural Products Research and Drug Discovery

Advanced Materials Research ◽

10.4028/www.scientific.net/amr.545.3 ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 545 ◽

pp. 3-15

Author(s):

Hoong Kun Fun ◽

Suchada Chantrapromma ◽

Nawong Boonnak

Keyword(s):

Natural Products ◽

Drug Discovery ◽

Single Crystal ◽

Natural Product ◽

Structure Determination ◽

Three Dimensional ◽

X Ray ◽

Powerful Technique ◽

Determination Of Absolute Configuration

Drug discovery from natural products resources have been extensively studied. The most important step in the discovery process is the identification of compounds with interesting biological activity. Single crystal X-ray structure determination is a powerful technique for natural products research and drug discovery in which the detailed three-dimensional structures that emerge can be co-related to the activities of these structures. This article shall present (i) co-crystal structures, (ii) determination of absolute configuration and (iii) the ability to distinguish between whether a natural product compound is a natural product or a natural product artifact. All these three properties are unique to the technique of single crystal X-ray structure determination.

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High-Throughput Screening Platform for Natural Product–Based Drug Discovery Against 3 Neglected Tropical Diseases

CrossRef Listing of Deleted DOIs ◽

10.1177/1087057114555846 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 20 (1) ◽

pp. 82-91 ◽

Cited By ~ 41

Author(s):

F. Annang ◽

G. Pérez-Moreno ◽

R. García-Hernández ◽

C. Cordon-Obras ◽

J. Martín ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Natural Products ◽

Drug Discovery ◽

Natural Product ◽

High Throughput ◽

High Throughput Screening ◽

Neglected Tropical Diseases ◽

Chemical Diversity ◽

Tropical Diseases ◽

Isolation And Characterization ◽

Microbial Extracts

African trypanosomiasis, leishmaniasis, and Chagas disease are 3 neglected tropical diseases for which current therapeutic interventions are inadequate or toxic. There is an urgent need to find new lead compounds against these diseases. Most drug discovery strategies rely on high-throughput screening (HTS) of synthetic chemical libraries using phenotypic and target-based approaches. Combinatorial chemistry libraries contain hundreds of thousands of compounds; however, they lack the structural diversity required to find entirely novel chemotypes. Natural products, in contrast, are a highly underexplored pool of unique chemical diversity that can serve as excellent templates for the synthesis of novel, biologically active molecules. We report here a validated HTS platform for the screening of microbial extracts against the 3 diseases. We have used this platform in a pilot project to screen a subset (5976) of microbial extracts from the MEDINA Natural Products library. Tandem liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry showed that 48 extracts contain potentially new compounds that are currently undergoing de-replication for future isolation and characterization. Known active components included actinomycin D, bafilomycin B1, chromomycin A3, echinomycin, hygrolidin, and nonactins, among others. The report here is, to our knowledge, the first HTS of microbial natural product extracts against the above-mentioned kinetoplastid parasites.

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Multiplexed screening of thousands of natural products for protein-ligand binding in native mass spectrometry

10.33774/chemrxiv-2021-sc39c-v2 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Giang Nguyen ◽

Jack Bennett ◽

Sherrie Liu ◽

Sarah Hancock ◽

Daniel Winter ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Mass Spectrometry ◽

Natural Products ◽

Drug Discovery ◽

Small Molecules ◽

Natural Product ◽

Drug Targets ◽

Structural Diversity ◽

Native Mass Spectrometry ◽

Protein Targets ◽

Rapid Measurement

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.

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Ecopharmacognosy: Exploring The Chemical And Biological Potential Of Nature For Human Health

Biology Medicine & Natural Product Chemistry ◽

10.14421/biomedich.2014.31.1-14 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 3 (1) ◽

pp. 1 ◽

Cited By ~ 5

Author(s):

Geoffrey A. Cordell

Keyword(s):

Health Care ◽

Natural Products ◽

Drug Discovery ◽

Natural Product ◽

Developed Countries ◽

Biologically Active ◽

Minor Role ◽

Natural Product Research ◽

Biological Potential ◽

The World

“Why didn’t they develop natural product drugs in a sustainable manner at the beginning of this century?” In 2035, when about 10.0 billion will inhabit Earth, will this be our legacy as the world contemplates the costs and availability of synthetic and gene-based products for primary health care? Acknowledging the recent history of the relationship between humankind and the Earth, it is essential that the health care issues being left for our descendants be considered in terms of resources. For most people in the world, there are two vast health care “gaps”, access to quality drugs and the development of drugs for major global and local diseases. Consequently for all of these people, plants, in their various forms, remain a primary source of health care. In the developed countries, natural products derived from plants assume a relatively minor role in health care, as prescription and over-the-counter products, even with the widespread use of phytotherapeutical preparations. Significantly, pharmaceutical companies have retrenched substantially in their disease areas of focus. These research areas do not include the prevalent diseases of the middle- and lower-income countries, and important diseases of the developed world, such as drug resistance. What then is the vision for natural product research to maintain the choices of drug discovery and pharmaceutical development for future generations? In this discussion some facets of how natural products must be involved globally, in a sustainable manner, for improving health care will be examined within the framework of the new term “ecopharmacognosy”, which invokes sustainability as the basis for research on biologically active natural products. Access to the biome, the acquisition, analysis and dissemination of plant knowledge, natural product structure diversification, biotechnology development, strategies for natural product drug discovery, and aspects of multitarget therapy and synergy research will be discussed. Options for the future will be presented which may be significant as countries decide how to develop approaches to relieve their own disease burden, and the needs of their population for improved access to medicinal agents.

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Natural product drug discovery in the artificial intelligence era

Chemical Science ◽

10.1039/d1sc04471k ◽

2022 ◽

Author(s):

Fernanda I Saldivar-Gonzalez ◽

Victor Daniel Aldas-Bulos ◽

José Luis Medina-Franco ◽

Fabien Plisson

Keyword(s):

Artificial Intelligence ◽

Natural Products ◽

Drug Discovery ◽

Natural Product ◽

Drug Targets ◽

Structural Diversity ◽

Protein Drug ◽

Privileged Structures

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...

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