Natural products in drug discovery: advances and opportunities
- Atanas G. Atanasov
- Sergey B. Zotchev
- Verena Maria Dirsch
- the International Natural Product Sciences Taskforce
- İlkay Erdoğan Orhan
- Maciej Banach
- Judith Maria Rollinger
- Davide Barreca
- Wolfram Weckwerth
- Rudolf Bauer
- Edward A. Bayer
- Muhammed Majeed
- Anupam Bishayee
- Valery N. Bochkov
- Günther K. Bonn
- Nady Braidy
- Franz Bučar
- Alejandro Cifuentes
- Grazia D’Onofrio
- Michael J. Bodkin
- Marc F. Diederich
- Albena T. Dinkova‐Kostova
- Thomas Efferth
- Khalid El Bairi
- Nicolas Arkells
- Tai-Ping Fan
- Bernd L. Fiebich
- Michael Freissmuth
- Milen I. Georgiev
- Simon Gibbons
- Keith M. Godfrey
- Christian W. Gruber
- Jag P. Heer
- Lukas Alfons Huber
- Elena Ibáñez
- Anake Kijjoa
- Anna Karolina Kiss
- Aiping Lü
- Francisco Antonio Macías
- Mark J.S. Miller
- Andrei Mocan
- Rolf Müller
- Ferdinando Nicoletti
- George Perry
- Valeria Pittalà
- Luca Rastrelli
- Michael Ristow
- Gian Luigi Russo
- Ana T. Sanches-Silva
- Daniela Schuster
- Helen Sheridan
- Krystyna Skalicka‐Woźniak
- Leandros Alexios Skaltsounis
- Eduardo Sobarzo‐Sánchez
- David S. Bredt
- Hermann Stuppner
- Antoni Sureda
- Nikolay Tzvetkov
- Rosa Anna Vacca
- Bharat Bhushan Aggarwal
- Maurizio Battino
- Francesca Giampieri
- Michaël Wink
- Jean‐Luc Wolfender
- Jianbo Xiao
- Andy Wai Kan Yeung
- Gérard Lizard
- Michael A. Popp
- Michael Heinrich
- Ioana Berindan‐Neagoe
- Marc Stadler
- Maria Daglia
- Robert Verpoorte
- CSClaudiu Trandafir Supuran
Nature Reviews Drug Discovery · 2021 · Nature Portfolio
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Abstract
Natural products and their structural analogues have historically made a major contribution to pharmacotherapy, especially for cancer and infectious diseases. Nevertheless, natural products also present challenges for drug discovery, such as technical barriers to screening, isolation, characterization and optimization, which contributed to a decline in their pursuit by the pharmaceutical industry from the 1990s onwards. In recent years, several technological and scientific developments - including improved analytical tools, genome mining and engineering strategies, and microbial culturing advances - are addressing such challenges and opening up new opportunities. Consequently, interest in natural products as drug leads is being revitalized, particularly for tackling antimicrobial resistance. Here, we summarize recent technological developments that are enabling natural product-based drug discovery, highlight selected applications and discuss key opportunities.