Natural Product Chemistry and Computer Aided Drug Design an Approach to Drug Discovery: A Review Article

Abstract

Natural products have been an inherent part of sustaining acculturation because of their medicinal properties. Past discoveries of bioactive natural products have relied on serendipity and accidental experience, and these compounds serve as inspiration for the generation of analogs with desired physicochemical properties. Bioactive natural products with therapeutic potential are abundantly available in nature and some of them are beyond exploration by conventional methods. However there has been a great breakthrough in the study of computer aided drug design (CADD) as many unfruitful lab researches have been averted and money, time and energies saved through CADD. Computer-aided drug design is a stimulating, arousing and manifold discipline where various aspects of applied and basic research integrate and induce each other. The empirical basis of CADD involves quantum mechanics and molecular modeling studies like structure based drug design; ligand-based drug design; database searching and binding affinity based on the knowledge of a biological target. In this present review we present the areas where natural product chemistry and CADD tools support drug discovery processes.