This book addresses the highly relevant and complex subject of research on drugs from natural products, discussing the current hot topics in the field. It also provides a detailed overview of the strategies used to research and develop these drugs. Respected experts explore issues involved in the production chain and when looking for new medicinal agents, including aspects such as therapeutic potential, functional foods, ethnopharmacology, metabolomics, virtual screening and regulatory scenarios. Further, the book describes strategic methods of isolation and characterization of active principles, biological assays, biotechnology of plants, synthesis, clinical trials and the use of tools to identity active principles.

Lead Molecules from Natural Products: Discovery and New Trends provides the reader with a thorough overview of current discoveries and trends in Natural Products research. This book consists of 22 chapters from well known scientists all over the world, with topics ranging from Natural Product Chemistry and Phytochemistry in their most basic form, to Molecular Biology and in silico drug design. Contributors describe their own laboratory experiences, revealing their findings, the legal issues encountered.The chapters, all of equally high quality, summarize years of extensive research in each area, and provide insight in the new themes of natural product research. The information will help to predict promising leads, useful for physicians in the treatment of different diseases and disease manifestations.* Explains the effects of plant extracts on gene expression profiling. * Details medicinal plant research from around the world* Explores a variety of medicinal uses of plants from traditional remedies, to anti-cancer agents and anti-salmonella agents.

Medicinal plants and their derived products remain as an indispensable source of bioactive molecules that serve as either drug candidates or lead compounds for drug design and discovery. There are several advantages for plant-derived therapeutics including wide availability, diverse pharmacological actions and a generally good profile of safety and tolerability. Over the recent years, there have been numerous reports from clinical studies testifying to the efficacy and safety of medicinal plants and phytochemicals in ameliorating several human diseases. A plethora of basic studies has also unravelled molecular mechanisms underlying the health benefits of herbal medicines. Nevertheless, issues such as identification of bioactive ingredients, standardization of the products and drug interactions remain to be further studied. In this book, we aim to put together several chapters on the medicinal properties and pharmacological action of medicinal plants, plant species and phytochemicals. The goal is to present a comprehensive collection on most of the therapeutic aspects of plant-derived natural products and molecular mechanisms thereof.

A fresh examination of the past successes of natural products as medicines and their new future from both conventional and new technologies. High-performance liquid chromatography profiling, combinatorial synthesis, genomics, proteomics, DNA shuffling, bioinformatics, and genetic manipulation all now make it possible to rapidly evaluate the activities of extracts as well as purified components derived from microbes, plants, and marine organisms. The authors apply these methods to new natural product drug discoveries, to microbial diversity, to specific groups of products (Chinese herbal drugs, antitumor drugs from microbes and plants, terpenoids, and arsenic compounds), and to specific sources (the sea, rainforest, and endophytes). These new opportunities show how research and development trends in the pharmaceutical industry can advance to include both synthetic compounds and natural products, and how this paradigm shift can be more productive and efficacious.

The inspiration provided by biologically active natural products to conceive of hybrids, congeners, analogs and unnatural variants is discussed by experts in the field in 16 highly informative chapters. Using well-documented studies over the past decade, this timely monograph demonstrates the current importance and future potential of natural products as starting points for the development of new drugs with improved properties over their progenitors. The examples are chosen so as to represent a wide range of natural products with therapeutic relevance among others, as anticancer agents, antimicrobials, antifungals, antisense nucleosides, antidiabetics, and analgesics. From the content: * Part I: Natural Products as Sources of Potential Drugs and Systematic Compound Collections * Part II: From Marketed Drugs to Designed Analogs and Clinical Candidates * Part III: Natural Products as an Incentive for Enabling Technologies * Part IV: Natural Products as Pharmacological Tools * Part V: Nature: The Provider, the Enticer, and the Healer

Natural Products have been important sources of useful drugs from prehistoric times to the present. This book gives an overview about this field and provides important recent contributions to the discovery of new drugs generated by research on natural products. Total synthesis of natural products with interesting biological activities is paving the way for the preparation of new and improved analogs. The methods of combinatorial chemistry permit the selection of the best drug from a large number of candidates. Beyond synthesis and evaluation of organic molecules a number of new bioorganic methods are coming to the fore and will be discucced in this isue of the ERnst schering Research Foundation workshop proceedings.

This book describes the processes that are involved in the development of new drugs. The authors discuss the history, role of natural products and concept of receptor interactions with regard to the initial stages of drug discovery. In a single, highly readable volume, it outlines the basics of pharmacological screening, drug target identification, and genetics involved in early drug discovery. The final chapters introduce readers to stem therapeutics, pharmacokinetics, pharmacovigilance, and toxicological testing. Given its scope, the book will enable research scholars, professionals and young scientists to understand the key fundamentals of drug discovery, including stereochemistry, pharmacokinetics, clinical trials, statistics and toxicology.