Computational Methods in Natural Products-Based Drug Discovery

Natural products serve as an important drug candidate for the drug discovery pipeline. Most medications that are today prescribed as therapeutic agents found their origin in natural sources, of which plant-based sources are significant. It should be noted that natural products are not confined to plants only but has a vast area. Earlier, owing to its complexity in structure, time taking and heavy on pocket factors have contributed to a decline in the use of natural products. Now, the technological advancement equipped with computational and cheminformatics approaches has gained the attention of scientific panels for NP-based drug discovery. The computational approach introduced the segregation of NPs into virtual and physical collections and associated challenges like database management. However, the advantages related to computational approaches might outweigh the risks. The NP-based drug discovery ought to have a vast future scope in the pipeline.