title: Sources for Leads: Natural Products and Libraries.
abstract: Natural products have traditionally been a major source of leads in the drug discovery process. However, the development of high-throughput screening led to an increased interest in synthetic methods that enabled the rapid construction of large libraries of molecules. This resulted in the termination or downscaling of many natural product research programs, but the chemical libraries did not necessarily produce a larger amount of drug leads. On one hand, this chapter explores the current state of natural product research within the drug discovery process. On the other hand it evaluates the efforts made to increase the amount of leads generated from chemical libraries and considers what role natural products could play here.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Chemistry, Technische Universität Berlin, Strasse des 17. Juni 124, 10623, Berlin, Germany.
authors.forename: Eric F
authors.initials: EF
authors.lastname: van Herwerden
authors.affiliation: Institute of Chemistry, Technische Universität Berlin, Strasse des 17. Juni 124, 10623, Berlin, Germany. roderich.suessmuth@tu-berlin.de.
authors.forename: Roderich D
authors.initials: RD
authors.lastname: Süssmuth
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001688:Biological Products; D020650:Combinatorial Chemistry Techniques; D055808:Drug Discovery; D006801:Humans; D060847:Metabolic Engineering
chemical_list: D001688:Biological Products
keywords: Diversity-oriented synthesis; Drug discovery; Fragment-based drug discovery; Natural products; Privileged structures; Unexplored natural product sources