Griffith Institute for Drug Discovery, Griffith University, Brisbane, Queensland 4111, Australia; email:
Annu Rev Pharmacol Toxicol. 2018 Jan 6;58:451-470. doi: 10.1146/annurev-pharmtox-010716-105029. Epub 2017 Oct 2.
Natural products (NPs) have been used as traditional medicines since antiquity. With more than 10 estimated compounds with molecular weights less than 500 Da representing chemical space, NPs occupy a very small percentage; however, they are significantly overrepresented in biologically relevant chemical space. The classical approach concentrates on identifying one or more NPs with biological activity from a source organism. There is much more to be learned from NPs than we can discover this narrow view. In this review, we discuss ways to harness the global properties of NPs.
天然产物（NPs）自古以来一直被用作传统药物。据估计，分子量小于 500 Da 的化合物中有超过 10 种代表了化学空间，而 NPs 仅占很小的比例；然而，它们在生物学相关的化学空间中却显著过剩。经典方法侧重于从源生物体中鉴定一种或多种具有生物活性的 NPs。从 NPs 中我们可以学到的东西远比我们通过这种狭隘的视角所发现的要多得多。在这篇综述中，我们讨论了利用 NPs 的全局特性的方法。
