| Natural products are the most consistently successful source of drug leads, both historically and currently. Despite this, the use of natural products in industrial drug discovery has fallen out of favour. Natural products are likely to continue to be sources of new commercially viable drug leads because the chemical novelty associated with natural products is higher than that of any other source: this is particularly important when searching for lead molecules against newly discovered targets for which there are no known small molecule leads. Despite the commonly held assumptions, natural products can be a more economical source of chemical diversity compared with synthesis of equivalent numbers of diverse chemicals. Additionally, natural products that... |
