Drug Discovery and Design Using Natural Products (imported)

Historically, natural products have great relevance for the development of new drugs. Natural molecules, in addition to directly providing new compounds with different therapeutic functions have provided scaffolds and a great diversity of structures that serve as inspiration for the design and discovery of new drugs. The great structural complexity and the significant number of natural compounds that can be obtained and their advantages also present some historical problems that need to be overcome. Issues such as difficulty in isolation, difficulty in synthesizing compounds found in nature in the laboratory, screening to evaluate the biological properties of these compounds, and structural optimization to enhance the pharmacological properties of biomolecules; are some of the main difficulties encountered in research with natural products and in the design/discovery of new medicines.