title: New approaches for studying the chemical diversity of natural resources and the bioactivity of their constituents.
abstract: Natural products (NPs) have historically been an important source of lead molecules in drug discovery. However, the interest that the pharmaceutical industry has had in NPs has declined in part because of the lack of compatibility of traditional natural-product extract libraries with  high-throughput screenings and the low hit rate. Furthermore, in contrast to the synthetic libraries, compounds from natural sources are likely to have complex structures which slow down the identification process and contribute to problems related to supply and manufacturing. In this paper,  we summarise some of the strategies that are being developed in our research unit to address these issues. On one hand, differential screening strategies were established with the aim of identifying dynamically induced NPs from silent biosynthetic pathways in plants and fungi that had been  exposed to different stress situations. On the other hand, high-resolution HPLC techniques were optimised for biological and chemical profiling of crude extracts. This led to an integrated platform for rapid and efficient identification of new drug-leads and biomarkers of interest that were  based on miniaturised technological approaches and metabolomics.
authors.affiliation: Phytochimie et Produits Naturels Bioactifs Ecole de Pharmacie Genève-Lausanne Section des Sciences Pharmaceutiques Université de Genève Quai Ansermet 30, CH-1211 Genève 4, Switzerland. jean-luc.wolfender@unige.ch
authors.forename: Jean-Luc
authors.initials: JL
authors.lastname: Wolfender
authors.forename: Emerson Ferreira
authors.initials: EF
authors.lastname: Queiroz
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001688:Biological Products / Q000008:administration & dosage / Q000737:chemistry / Q000494:pharmacology*; D055808:Drug Discovery; D005658:Fungi / Q000378:metabolism; D020869:Gene Expression Profiling; D006801:Humans; D055432:Metabolomics; D010946:Plants, Medicinal / Q000737:chemistry
chemical_list: D001688:Biological Products