Natural Products Chemistry

Book excerpt: Notoriously cumbersome to isolate and challenging to synthesize, the path of natural products to viable drugs is an arduous journey. Yet compounds isolated from nature may possess fascinating structures, biological profiles and pharmaceutical potential far greater than anything made by man. Natural Products Chemistry: Sources, Separations and Structures presents a practical guide to sourcing, isolating, and discovering new compounds from nature many of which become pharmaceutical drugs. This book emphasizes the challenges and advantages of products acquired from nature, compared to those obtained from combinatorial chemistry. A basic introduction, the book describes the whole cycle from farm to final compound, backed up by case studies drawn from industry and research applications. It broadens the scope of applications and draws upon examples from various sources. Natural products chemistry, as taught today, draws its examples mainly from marine chemistry or plant chemistry; however, there is also a fascinating and rich world of fermented (microbial and algal) products leading to complex structures. Thus, the book draws upon examples from the microbial world and from insects too. Therefore, this is a source of bioactive metabolites, not traditionally available in academic settings, more the mainstay of the pharmaceutical industry. Providing a roadmap of the process of collecting a compound from nature, isolating the active ingredient, and determining the chemical structure, this book provides a unique approach to the world of natural products.