Natural Products as Sources of New Drugs over the 30 Years from 1981 to 2010†
Abstract
This review is an updated and expanded version of the three prior reviews that were published in this journal in 1997, 2003 and 2007. In the case of all approved therapeutic agents, the time frame has been extended to cover the 30 years from January 1st 1981 to December 31st 2010 for all diseases world-wide, and from 1950 (earliest so far identified) to December 2010 for all approved antitumor drugs world-wide. We have continued to utilize our secondary subdivision of a “natural product mimic” or “NM” to join the original primary divisions, and have added a new designation “natural product botanical” or “NB” to cover those botanical “defined mixtures” that have now been recognized as drug entities by the FDA and similar organizations. From the data presented, the utility of natural products as sources of novel structures, but not necessarily the final drug entity, is still alive and well. Thus, in the area of cancer, over the time frame from around the 1940s to date, of the 175 small molecules, 131 or 74.8% are other than “S” (synthetic), with 85 or 48.6% actually being either natural products or directly derived there from. In other areas, the influence of natural product structures is quite marked with, as expected from prior information, the anti-infective area being dependent on natural products and their structures. Although combinatorial chemistry techniques have succeeded as methods of optimizing structures, and have been used very successfully in the optimization of many recently approved agents, we are only able to identify only one de novo combinatorial compound approved as a drug in this 30-year time frame. We wish to draw the attention of readers to the rapidly evolving recognition that a significant number of natural product drugs/leads are actually produced by microbes and/or microbial interactions with the “host from whence it was isolated”, and therefore we consider that this area of natural product research should be expanded significantly.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3721181/
In the area of cancer, over the time frame from around the 1940s to date, of the 175 small molecules, 131 or 74.8% are other than “S” (synthetic), with 85 or 48.6% actually being either natural products or directly derived there from.
The chart below is for all drugs:
Major Categories of Sources
The major categories used are as follows:
-
“B” Biological; usually a large (>45 residues) peptide or protein either isolated from an organism/cell line or produced by biotechnological means in a surrogate host.
-
“N” Natural product.
-
“NB” Natural product “Botanical” (in general these have been recently approved).
-
“ND” Derived from a natural product and is usually a semi-synthetic modification.
-
“S” Totally synthetic drug, often found by random screening/modification of an existing agent.
-
“S*” Made by total synthesis, but the pharmacophore is/was from a natural product.
-
“V” Vaccine.
