Drug Discovery from Natural Products

This book offers an integrated review of recent trends in natural products drug discovery and the key lead candidates that are outstanding for their chemistry and biology as a starting point in novel drug development. The editors focus on different trends that have and will continue to have a major impact on the multiple stages of modern drug discovery mainly from NPs that have not been included in other works. This is complemented by a series of case studies written by leading experts from industry and academia on key molecules and their derivatives that have been chosen for their novelty in chemistry, biology and clinical applications. The book demonstrates the current confluence of different disciplines in chemical biology and synthetic chemistry supported by a more profound knowledge of systems biology that ensures the concurrency and synergisms of expertise from different research fields that impact in the discovery of novel molecules. In the first section the chapters reflect recent approaches to exploit the biosynthetic potential of microbial resources (including genome mining, metagenomic and epigenetic approaches), as well as biosynthetic chemistry tools to respond to product supply and novel screening alternatives that have lead to the discovery of novel chemistry. The second part reviews, in the form of case studies, some examples of bioactive molecules in the important therapeutic areas of antiinfectives, oncology and antiparasitics. The editors have attained more than twenty years experience in drug discovery from microbial natural products in the large pharma environment and can present from their perspective a dynamic area of research in constant evolution. The book will be essential reading for pharmaceutical scientists in industry and academia, medicinal chemists, pharmacologists and microbiologists.