Natural products

Natural products refer to chemical compounds or substances produced by a living organism—that is, found in nature. In the broadest sense, natural products include any substance produced by life. Natural products can also be prepared by chemical synthesis (both semi-synthesis and total synthesis) and have played a central role in the development of the field of organic chemistry by providing challenging synthetic targets. The term encompasses complex extracts from these organisms, pure compounds isolated from them, and the synthetic derivatives of these compounds.

Sources of Natural Products

Natural products can be derived from various sources:

• Plants: Many natural products are derived from plants. These include alkaloids, flavonoids, and terpenoids.
• Animals: Animal-derived natural products can include hormones, pheromones, and toxins.
• Microorganisms: Bacteria, fungi, and other microorganisms are a rich source of antibiotics and other pharmaceuticals.
• Marine organisms: Marine environments are highly diverse and have produced a variety of unique compounds, including toxins and pigments.

Role in Medicine

Natural products have historically been a source of new drugs. For example, the use of willow tree bark for pain relief led to the discovery of aspirin, and the soil bacterium Streptomyces is the source of streptomycin, an antibiotic. Natural products remain an important source of innovative therapeutic agents for various diseases due to their chemical diversity.

Challenges and Opportunities

The search for new natural products is not without challenges. The complexity of isolating and characterizing unknown substances can be significant. Moreover, the sustainable production of natural products, especially those derived from endangered species or habitats, poses ethical and logistical challenges.

Despite these challenges, advances in technologies such as genomics, bioinformatics, and analytical chemistry have dramatically increased the efficiency with which natural products can be studied, thus continuing to offer promising avenues for the discovery of new drugs and other products.

Economic and Ethical Considerations

The commercial exploitation of natural products has led to intellectual property rights and benefit-sharing issues, particularly concerning resources obtained from biodiversity-rich countries that are typically developing countries. The Convention on Biological Diversity seeks to address this by ensuring that benefits arising from the use of genetic resources are shared fairly and equitably.

See Also

• Ethnopharmacology
• Pharmacognosy
• Bioprospecting
• Secondary metabolite