Spiroketal natural products isolated from traditional Chinese medicine: isolation, biological activity, biosynthesis, and synthesis

Covering: 2010 to December 2024Traditional Chinese medicine is an ancient knowledge base of therapeutic plants and preparations. Today, the isolation of bioactive natural products from traditional Chinese medicine is a valuable tool to identify new scaffolds for drug discovery. One such scaffold, the spiroketal moiety, is widespread in bioactive natural products, often crucial to the bioactivity of the compound. The convergent evolution of the spiroketal moiety in natural products arising from diverse phylogenetic and biosynthetic origins is a hallmark of the biological importance of this moiety. This review aims to highlight the diverse biosynthetic origins and ensuant structural diversity of spiroketal natural products isolated from traditional Chinese medicine, along with their potent and wide array of biological activities, and synthetic approaches to access these natural products to date.