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DOI: 10.1055/s-0035-1556374
New strategy to search lead compounds with unique structures from plants
For more than a century, natural products have been the most consistent source of lead compounds in drug discovery. Based on biosynthesis pathway and basic structure, natural products found in seed plants (phytochemicals) could be categorized into three major groups including alkaloids, terpenoids and phenolics, and from the viewpoint of previous research and development on natural products chemistry, we now have sufficient data to suggest that most of the therapeutic agents derived from phytochemicals are alkaloids or terpenoids. Whereas the natural phenolic compounds play a vital role in disease prevention. In recent decades, wide application of LC/MS technique enabled us to pre-screen the chemical profile of the matrices and identify the materials containing unique molecules with pharmaceutical interest prior to the time-consuming process of isolation and elucidation. Using the novel strategy upon LC/MS pre-screening, dozens of medicinal plant samples collected from Africa on the basis of bioassay results and traditional application were subjected to in-depth chemical profiling using LC/MS. Under LC/MS guided screening, most species failed to yield unique/new compounds, and only a few plant species were found to contain unique/novel structures. Under this model, we were able to successfully narrow down the plant list to facilitate further natural products investigation, which is presently still very laborious work.