The main directions of Natural Products Chemistry in the Third Millennium are summarized

Bankova, Vassya

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Vassya Bankova

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Natural products chemistry in the third millennium

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Chemistry Central Journal
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Natural products chemistry in the third millennium
Vassya Bankova*
Address: Institute of Organic Chemistry with Centre of Phytochemistry, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, 1113 Sofia, Bulgaria.
Email: Vassya Bankova* - bankova@orgchm.bas.bg
* Corresponding author    
Abstract
The main directions of Natural Products Chemistry in the Third Millennium are summarized.
In the beginning of organic chemistry was natural prod-
ucts chemistry. For a long period, up to the 1960's the
structural studies of natural products served as the princi-
ple driving force for the discovery of new chemical reactiv-
ity. The introduction of spectroscopic techniques,
however, removed much of the "intellectual challenge"
involved in structure elucidation. Furthermore, natural
products chemistry suffered a dramatic decline from the
mid 1990's when major pharmaceutical companies disin-
vested in this area and switched to more "rational" combi-
chem approaches. Nevertheless, the improvements in
spectroscopic methods have historically stimulated natu-
ral products chemistry and the efforts to examine new
compounds from unusual organisms rapidly and system-
atically. Natural products chemistry survived and began to
flourish again in recent years also through chemical biol-
ogy and chemical genetics and the realization that natural
product structures often explore structural space unavaila-
ble to combi-chem approaches. As a result, challenges for
natural product chemists are not diminishing, they are
just changing. Natural product chemistry turned to an
interdisciplinary science, where the success of a chemist
would only be possible in close collaboration with biolo-
gists, pharmacologists, and clinicists. Thus many novel
biological activities - such as beta-tubulin assembly inhib-
itors for example, could only have emerged from the nat-
ural products arena.
Combined with pharmacological screening, natural prod-
ucts chemistry has always provided highly useful leads for
drug discovery. The searches for new biologically active
compounds are most often based on hints coming from
ethnobotany but there are still a huge number of unstud-
ied plants, not to speak of mushrooms, marine organisms,
insects, and microorganisms. There is a wealth of molecu-
lar diversity out there, waiting to be discovered and uti-
lized. The central issue of such type of studies, structure
elucidation, although often believed to be trivial, is still a
process full of adventure, discovery, and even unavoida-
ble pitfalls. Thus structure elucidation has still much to
offer, especially when combined with biological tests.
Chemistry Central Journal is waiting for your results to pub-
lish.
Besides the classic studies connected to pharmacological
activities, new developments challenge natural products
chemists, such as metabolomics, the large-scale phyto-
chemical analysis in the functional genomics era. Metab-
olomic requires from a natural product chemist brilliant
knowledge of modern analytical techniques and chem-
ometry and close collaboration with biochemists and
biologists. Chemical ecology, too, could not advance
properly without natural product chemistry.
Approximately 60% of the world's population relies
almost entirely on plants for medication. However, if phy-
topharmaceuticals want to be regarded as rational drugs,
they need to be standardized and pharmaceutical quality
must be approved. For this reason, another important task
for natural products chemistry is connected to standardi-
Published: 19 February 2007
Chemistry Central Journal 2007, 1:1
© 2007 Bankova 
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), 
which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.Page 1 of 2
(page number not for citation purposes)
Chemistry Central Journal 2007, 1:1zation: to develop proper analytical methods of quality
control, to make sure that medicines obtained from natu-
ral sources are safe and of reproducible efficacy.
The publication of natural product research results in an
open access journal is of great importance with respect
both to research activities and to effective use of natural
resources, removing both price and permission barriers. It
is also important to authors, giving them the opportunity
to publish their results where they will be most easily
accessed by those who mostly need them. The new open
access Chemistry Central Journal gives this opportunity to
authors and readers in all domains of Natural Product
Chemistry.
We look forward to your enthusiastic and frequent partic-
ipation in the exciting project Chemistry Central Journal as
readers and authors.Page 2 of 2
(page number not for citation purposes)


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Natural products chemistry in the third millennium

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