REQUIMTE/LAQV, Laboratório de Farmacognosia, Departamento de Química, Faculdade de Farmácia, Universidade do Porto, R. Jorge Viterbo Ferreira, nº 228, 4050-313 Porto, Portugal.
J Pharm Biomed Anal. 2018 Jan 5;147:234-249. doi: 10.1016/j.jpba.2017.07.035. Epub 2017 Jul 31.
The discovery of new chemical entities from natural sources has been historically driven by the biological activity observed in crude extracts or by the significant abundance of secondary metabolites, through a laborious workflow, frequently culminating on the re-isolation of known compounds. This high rate of rediscovery was one of the main contributing factors leading to the decreased interest in natural products from pharmaceutical companies and academic research groups until very recently. Largely driven by the technological advances in analytical instrumentation, mainly mass spectrometry (MS) and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), a renaissance on natural products research and associated drug discovery programs is being witnessed. The development of hybrid platforms combining the strengths of MS and NMR enables a faster and more accurate identification of known metabolites, allowing the prioritization of new natural products, not only with new chemical scaffolds but also frequently exhibiting relevant biological effects that may ultimately provide new lead drugs. Furthermore, the synergism resulting from the combination of both techniques allows almost unlimited access to the chemical space available formed by new natural sources.
从天然来源中发现新的化学实体，历史上是通过观察粗提物中的生物活性或通过大量存在的次生代谢物，通过繁琐的工作流程来驱动的，这通常最终会导致对已知化合物的重新分离。这种高发现率是导致制药公司和学术研究团体对天然产物的兴趣降低的主要因素之一，直到最近才有所改观。主要受到分析仪器技术进步的推动，特别是质谱（MS）和核磁共振（NMR），天然产物研究和相关药物发现计划正在复兴。结合 MS 和 NMR 优势的混合平台的发展，使得对已知代谢物的更快、更准确的鉴定成为可能，从而可以优先考虑具有新化学结构的新天然产物，这些产物不仅具有新颖的化学结构，而且经常表现出相关的生物学效应，最终可能提供新的先导药物。此外，这两种技术的结合所产生的协同作用几乎可以无限地利用由新天然来源形成的可用化学空间。
