The Success of Natural Products in Drug Discovery（天然产物在药物发现的成功）.pdf

Pharmacology Pharmacy, 2013, 4, 17-31 17 /10.4236/pp.2013.43A003 Published Online June 2013 (/journal/pp) The Success of Natural Products in Drug Discovery Mouhssen Lahlou Service des Sciences de la Vie, Ministère de l’Enseignement Supérieur, de la Recherche Scientifique et de la Formation des Cadres, Rabat, Morocco. Email: lahloumoh@ Received April 25th, 2013; revised May 27th, 2013; accepted June 5th, 2013 Copyright © 2013 Mouhssen Lahlou. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. ABSTRACT Drug discovery leading to robust and viable lead candidates’ remains a challenging scientific task, which is the transi- tion from a screening hit to a drug candidate, requires expertise and experience. Natural products and their derivatives have been recognized for many years as a source of therapeutic agents and of structural diversity. However, in addition to their chemical structure diversity and their biodiversity, the development of new technologies has revolutionized the screening of natural products in discovering new drugs. Applying these technologies compensates for the inherent limi- tations of natural products and offers a unique opportunity to re-establish natural products as a major source for drug discovery. The present article attempts to describe the utilization of compounds derived from natural resources as drug candidates, with a focus on the success of these resources in the process of finding and discovering new and effective drug compounds, an approach commonly referred to as “natural product drug discovery”. Keywords: Biodiversity; Drug Discovery; Efficacy; Natural Products; New Technologies; Structural and Chemical Diversity; Success Steps 1. In