The roots of innovation – Can we afford to turn away from natural product drug discovery research?

European Biopharmaceutical Review, January 2011, p.52

Kai Lamottke at Bicoll GmbH, Christophe Ripoll at Naturalpha and Robert Walczak at Genfit SA
ask if the biotech industry can afford to turn away from natural product drug discovery research.
One of the most successful sources of scaffolds for the identification and
development of new drugs are natural compounds, extracted from diverse marine
and terrestrial protobiota, arthropods and plants. Small molecule drugs have
been developed from chemical entities obtained or derived from natural products
or from synthetic molecules presenting a natural product-inspired pharmacophore. Read more in English