Study on natural medicinal chemistry and new drug development.

From prehistoric time,humankind has used plants to alleviate and treat diseases.Natural products are secondary metabolites evolutionary selected and prevalidated by nature after millions of years,displaying a unique chemical diversity and corresponding diversity of the biological activities as well as drug-like properties.Around half of the drugs currently in clinical use are of natural product origin,including directly and indirectly,such as semisynthesis,mimic synthesis or inspired drug design.Despite these successes,large pharmaceutical companies have embraced the era of combinatorial chemistry in favor of high-throughput synthesis and screening during 1980-1990′s.Now the drug discovery industry is facing the considerable challenges,so more and more attention was re-focused on the role of natural product chemistry for the new drug research and development(R D) in the past 10 years.Natural products have become one of the most important resources of novel lead compounds especially for the critical diseases.This paper reviewed the roles of natural product chemistry in the new drug R D,and discussed the prospect of natural product chemistry.