Natural product-informed exploration of chemical space to enable bioactive molecular discovery. Issue 3 (5th January 2021)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Nelson, Adam; Karageorgis, George
• Is Part Of: RSC medicinal chemistry. Volume 12:Issue 3(2021)
• Page Start: 353
• Page End: 362
• Publication Date: 2021-01-05
• Subjects: Pharmaceutical chemistry -- Periodicals; 615.19005
• DOI: 10.1039/d0md00376j
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 2632-8682

Abstract

Abstract : Natural products serve as starting points for the systematic exploration of biologically-relevant chemical space to afford bioactive molecules which can be used to study biological processes. Abstract : The search for new bioactive molecules remains an open challenge limiting our ability to discover new drugs to treat disease and chemical probes to comprehensively study biological processes. The vastness of chemical space renders its exploration unfeasible by synthesis alone. Historically, chemists have tended to explore chemical space unevenly without committing to systematic frameworks for navigation. This minireview covers a range of approaches that take inspiration from the structure or origin of natural products, and help focus molecular discovery on biologically-relevant regions of chemical space. All these approaches have enabled the discovery of distinctive and novel bioactive small molecules such as useful chemical probes of biological mechanisms. This minireview comments on how such approaches may be developed into more general frameworks for the systematic identification of currently unexplored regions of biologically-relevant chemical space, a challenge that is central to both chemical biology and medicinal chemistry.