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Research into drugs derived from natural products declining mongabay.com July 09, 2009 Review reports that many pharma companies have eliminated their natural product research programs in the past decade, while from 2001 to 2008 there was a 30 percent drop in the number of natural product-based drugs undergoing clinical studies.
"Untapped biological resources, 'smart screening' methods, robotic separation with structural analysis, metabolic engineering, and synthetic biology offer exciting technologies for new natural product drug discovery," write Jesse Li and John Vederas in Friday's issue of the journal Science. "Advances in rapid genetic sequencing, coupled with manipulation of biosynthetic pathways, may provide a vast resource for the future discovery of pharmaceutical agents."
"Antibiotics (e.g., penicillin, tetracycline, erythromycin), antiparasitics (e.g., avermectin), antimalarials (e.g., quinine, artemisinin), lipid control agents (e.g., lovastatin and analogs), immunosuppressants for organ transplants (e.g., cyclosporine, rapamycins) and anticancer drugs (e.g., taxol, doxorubicin) revolutionized medicine," they write. "Although the expansion of synthetic medicinal chemistry in the 1990s caused the proportion of new drugs based on natural products to drop to ~50% (Fig. 1), 13 natural product–derived drugs were approved in the United States between 2005 and 2007, with five of them being the first members of new classes." Related articles Tropical forest tree is source of new mosquito repellent as effective as DEET (02/05/2009) Isolongifolenone, a natural compound found in the Tauroniro tree (Humiria balsamifera) of South America, has been identified as an effective deterrent of mosquitoes and ticks, report researchers writing in the latest issue of Journal of Medical Entomology. An interview a shaman in the Amazon rainforest 
(07/28/2008) Deep in the Suriname rainforest, an innovative conservation group is working with indigenous tribes to protect their forest home and culture using traditional knowledge combined with cutting-edge technology. The Amazon Conservation Team (ACT) is partnering with the Trio, an Amerindian group that lives in the remote Suriname-Brazil border area of South America, to develop programs to protect their forest home from illegal gold miners and encroachment, improve village health, and strengthen cultural ties between indigenous youths and elders at a time when such cultures are disappearing even faster than rainforests. In June 2008 mongabay.com visited the community of Kwamalasamutu in Suriname to see ACT's programs in action. During the visit, Amasina, a Trio shaman who works with ACT, answered some questions about his role as a traditional healer in the village.
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