title: Counting on natural products for drug design.
abstract: Natural products and their molecular frameworks have a long tradition as valuable starting points for medicinal chemistry and drug discovery. Recently, there has been a revitalization of interest in the inclusion of these chemotypes in compound collections for screening and achieving selective target modulation. Here we discuss natural-product-inspired drug discovery with a focus on recent advances in the design of synthetically tractable small molecules that mimic nature's chemistry. We highlight the potential of innovative computational tools in processing structurally complex natural products to predict their macromolecular targets and attempt to forecast the role that natural-product-derived fragments and fragment-like natural products will play in next-generation drug discovery.
authors.affiliation: Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), Department of Chemistry and Applied Biosciences, Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Vladimir-Prelog-Weg 4, 8093 Zürich, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Tiago
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Rodrigues
authors.affiliation: Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), Department of Chemistry and Applied Biosciences, Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Vladimir-Prelog-Weg 4, 8093 Zürich, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Daniel
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Reker
authors.affiliation: Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), Department of Chemistry and Applied Biosciences, Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Vladimir-Prelog-Weg 4, 8093 Zürich, Switzerland.|inSili.com LLC, Segantinisteig 3, 8049 Zürich, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Petra
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Schneider
authors.affiliation: Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), Department of Chemistry and Applied Biosciences, Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Vladimir-Prelog-Weg 4, 8093 Zürich, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Gisbert
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Schneider
mesh_terms: D001688:Biological Products / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000627:therapeutic use; D002626:Chemistry, Pharmaceutical / Q000379:methods / Q000639:trends; D015195:Drug Design; D055808:Drug Discovery / Q000379:methods*; D046911:Macromolecular Substances; D015394:Molecular Structure; D000068718:Rosuvastatin Calcium / Q000138:chemical synthesis / Q000737:chemistry
chemical_list: D001688:Biological Products; D046911:Macromolecular Substances; D000068718:Rosuvastatin Calcium