title: From nature to the laboratory and into the clinic.
abstract: Natural products possess a broad diversity of structure and function, and they provide inspiration for chemistry, biology, and medicine. In this review article, we highlight and place in context our laboratory's total syntheses of, and related studies on, complex secondary metabolites that were clinically important drugs, or have since been developed into useful medicines, namely amphotericin B (1), calicheamicin gamma(1)(I) (2), rapamycin (3), Taxol (4), the epothilones [e.g., epothilones A (5) and B (6)], and vancomycin (7). We also briefly highlight our research with other selected inspirational natural products possessing interesting biological activities [i.e., dynemicin A (8), uncialamycin (9), eleutherobin (10), sarcodictyin A (11), azaspiracid-1 (12), thiostrepton (13), abyssomicin C (14), platensimycin (15), platencin (16), and palmerolide A (17)].
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry and The Skaggs Institute for Chemical Biology, The Scripps Research Institute, 10550 North Torrey Pines Road, BCC408, La Jolla, CA 92037, USA. kcn@scripps.edu
authors.forename: K C
authors.initials: KC
authors.lastname: Nicolaou
authors.forename: Jason S
authors.initials: JS
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.forename: Stephen M
authors.initials: SM
authors.lastname: Dalby
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001688:Biological Products / Q000737:chemistry / Q000494:pharmacology; D004353:Drug Evaluation, Preclinical; D006801:Humans; D007753:Laboratories
chemical_list: D001688:Biological Products