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Description of  Natural Product Chemistry for Drug Discovery

Natural products hold a special place in drug discovery having provided and inspired numerous life saving medicines and medical breakthroughs, particularly in the treatment of infectious diseases, cancer, hypercholesterolemia and immunological disorders. Twenty one drugs approved for marketing between 2003 and 2008 owe their existence to natural product leads discovered from mainly actinomycete, bacteria and fungal sources.1 It has been our intention with this book to not only provide insights into the likely sources and methodologies that may be used to discover new natural product based drugs in the future, but also to stress the utility and importance of this approach to drug discovery in terms of new clinical candidates and recent commercial successes. The final section of this book provides fascinating accounts of the twists, turns and pitfalls, as well as the role serendipity played, in the successful development and commercialisation of daptomycin and micafungin. Accounts of natural product derived drug candidates which are currently being evaluated in clinical trials may be found in Chapters 11–13, with salinosporamide A and bevirimat described in detail. The pipeline of 36 drug candidates which are in late stage clinical development may imply a continuing role for natural products in drug discovery, but we will return to this issue towards the end of this preface. Before then, let us look at the earlier chapters which follow in this