Doing scientific research on natural compounds isolated from herbs and other plants is a very exciting, and can have a direct influence on human health, since such compounds have the potential to be developed in very successful modern pharmaceutical drug. Morphine, quinine, and many other indispensable medications are molecules derived from Nature.

Recognizing the potential of the natural molecules, the Austrian science fund (FWF) has recently financed a collaborative Austrian scientific network project called Drugs from Nature Targeting Inflammation (DNTI). The DNTI project gathered together scientists having expertise in almost all aspects relevant for natural molecules drug discovery, including phytochemistry, in vitro and in vivo pharmacology, biotechnology, ethnopharmacology, organic synthesis, and computer modeling. The combined multi-disciplinary expertise enabled DNTI participants to write together a joint very comprehensive review, summarizing the gathered experience, and broadly covering the natural molecules-based drug discovery research topic in a unique way. This work, entitled “Discovery and resupply of pharmacologically active plant-derived natural products: A review.” was very recently accepted for publication in Biotechnology Advances, a very influential top-class scientific journal. The analysis that we have performed in this work yields many deep insides in this research sphere, and interestingly indicated recent sharply increasing interest in the area of natural compounds drug discovery research, in spite of the late lack-of-interest displayed by the pharma industry. Whereby this review provided an early indication for the reviving interest in natural compounds drug discovery research, a very strong signal pointing in the same direction was very soon afterwards provided also by the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, which went to William Campbell and Satoshi Omura, and Youyou Tu for their works related to the successful development of the pharmaceutical drugs Avermectin and Artemisinin, both of which represent molecules derived from the Nature.

Publication

Discovery and resupply of pharmacologically active plant-derived natural products: A review.

Atanasov AG, Waltenberger B, Pferschy-Wenzig EM, Linder T, Wawrosch C, Uhrin P, Temml V, Wang L, Schwaiger S, Heiss EH, Rollinger JM, Schuster D, Breuss JM, Bochkov V, Mihovilovic MD, Kopp B, Bauer R, Dirsch VM, Stuppner H

Biotechnol Adv. 2015 Aug 15