Natural products research : prospects and retrospect

More than 3 decades ago we were already struggling (with primitive instruments) to study natural producs which had beed the major driving force in organic chemistry. Unfortunately there was little interest shown by most pharmacologists and other scientists as the end-products seem to be too far down the line in terms of years and can also sometimes be elusive. Only in recent years was here a paradigm shift when better bioassays become available as the whole world discovered nutraceuticals (from natural products of course) and took up natural cures seriously. With the human genome being almost completely solved, the mysteries of traditional medicines can now be unravelled. The Malaysia tropical forest is home to a large number of plants, many with ethnobotanical uses while a greater biodiversity from other organisms, both of terrestial or marine origin, awaits further study. Nowadays the chemistry of natural products is relatively easy but the economic translation to drugs, pesticides and other high-valued products remains difficult and demanding. In general, drug discovery and development programmes seem to be out of reach for most Malaysian institutions. Fortunately, many plants with ethnobotanical/enthnopharmacological activities are acceptable as OTC health-giving supplements or botanicals while the development to pharmaceuticals can be placed as a longer-term research. The isolation and structure elucidation of natural products are not big obstacles so that lead compounds can be quickly identified. Even in the field of bioassays high-throughput systems can be made available. In recent years a rich harvest of novel natural products had been made, some of which possess cytotoxic or insecticidal activities. Some of the diverse classes of natural products, e.g. acetogenins, alkaloids, biflavonoids, coumarins, terpenoids and xanthonoids, isolated from Malaysian plant families such as Annonaceae, Apocynaceae, Guttiferae, Meliaceae, Rubiaceae, Rutaceae, Verbenaceae, etc., have been encountered. The time to study and develop natural products on a multidisciplinary scale has never been better than at present.