Pure compound libraries; a new perspective for natural product based drug discovery

What often distinguishes the leaders in drug discovery and development from the rest is the quality of their compound libraries and the ease of access that they have to the information within those libraries. The screening of natural products can provide greater structural diversity than standard sy nthetic chemistry and offers significant opportunities for finding novel lo w molecular weight lead compounds. However, which strategy is the best for natural-product-based drug discovery? Two well established but relatively t ime consuming approaches are the screening of crude extracts and pre-fracti onated extracts. This case study describes a third, pure-compound-screening approach, and discusses its benefits and pitfalls.