Recent developments in natural product-based drug discovery for tuberculosis

• Natural products are at the origin of several TB drugs.
• There is a continuous flow of new natural products with potent anti-Mtb activity.
• Modification of older natural products has led to potential new drug candidates.
• Natural product-based inhibitors of Mtb are associated with new modes of action.

Natural products (NPs) have been at the origin of several established drugs against tuberculosis (TB). Although the current clinical TB pipeline does not feature any candidates derived from new NP scaffolds, numerous novel NPs or NP analogs have been discovered in the recent past with promising activity against Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb). This includes newly discovered structures as well as known NP classes that had not been previously recognized to be active against Mtb. These compounds could help to replenish the dry clinical TB pipeline and, thus, contribute to improvements in the treatment of a devastating disease.