The relevance of higher plants in lead compound discovery programs

Abstract

Along with compounds from terrestrial microorganisms, the constituents of higher plants have provided a substantial number of the natural product-derived drugs used currently in Western medicine. Interest in the elucidation of new structures of the secondary metabolite constituents of plants has remained high among the natural products community over the first decade of the 21st century, particularly of species that are used in systems of traditional medicine or are utilized as botanical dietary supplements. In this review, progress made in the senior author's laboratory in research work on naturally occurring sweeteners and other taste-modifying substances and on potential anticancer agents from tropical plants will be described.

Figure 1

Comparison of the types of organisms of origin of new compounds published in the Journal of Natural Products in the years 2001 and 2010. (Totals of 1,142 and 1,369 natural products from all types of organisms were published in 2001 and 2010, respectively. All types of organisms with a marine or aquatic habitat are grouped together. An example of an unspecified organism is propolis).

Figure 2

Preliminary structure-activity relationship diagram for silvestrol (69)