Natural products: An evolving role in future drug discovery

The therapeutic areas of infectious diseases and oncology have benefited from abundant scaffold diversity in natural products, able to interact with many specific targets within the cell and indeed for many years have been source or inspiration for the majority of FDA approved drugs. The present review describes natural products (NPs), semi-synthetic NPs and NP-derived compounds that have undergone clinical evaluation or registration from 2005 to 2010 by disease area i.e. infectious (bacterial, fungal, parasitic and viral), immunological, cardiovascular, neurological, inflammatory and related diseases and oncology.

Natural products have long been an excellent souces or inspiration for the drug development. This review describes natural and NP-derived compounds that have undergone clinical evaluation since past five years.Figure optionsDownload as PowerPoint slideHighlights
► Medicinal plants have long been an excellent source of pharmaceutical agents.
► NP scaffolds are infact key in optimizing chemical diversity for human use.
► This review deals the clinical evaluation of 232 NP or their inspired drug candidates.