Preface

Natural products always play an important role in the process of drug discovery and the development of modern medicine. Drug discovery aiming to find robust and viable lead candidates is a challenging and time taking process that involves the participation of experts from various fields. Screening of natural products to a new molecule or new biological effect of an existing drug candidate requires expertise, experience and modern techniques. Natural products and their structural analogues are used as a lead in the drug discovery process and have always played an imperative role in pharmacotherapy. However, drug discovery from natural products is always challenging because of technical issues, such as screening, isolation, characterization, identification and optimization, which results in a decline in their pursuit by pharmaceutical companies. Over the past few decades, the demand for natural products has been increasing, and researchers have concentrated on drug discovery from natural sources, predominantly focusing on traditional medicinal information. Plants are an abundant source of chemically vastly diverse secondary metabolites, which upon screening, exhibited different biological functions and are still far from being comprehensively investigated. Scientific awareness in natural product-based drug discovery leads to concentrating the focus on finding a new strategy for isolation, identification, characterization, screening of natural products and resupply of biologically active compounds being developed, which are the necessity of the future. Drug discovery from medicinal plants can be considered a hot spot of research. A large number of drugs were obtained from the medicinal plant, and several others have been discovered by using phytochemicals as lead. Plants have historically proven their value as a major source of bioactive molecules, and still represent an imperative tool for the discovery of novel drug leads. Intrinsic complexity involved in drug discovery from plant sources necessitates extremely integrated interdisciplinary approaches. Scientific developments and technological advancement, including sophisticated analytical tools, engineering strategies, in silico approach, etc., are opening up new opportunities to reestablish natural products as a key source for drug discovery and find new drugs quickly. Volume 2 of this series of the book entitled “Natural Medicine: New Avenues in Drug Discovery and Bioactive Natural Products” is devoted to the current research in drug discovery from natural sources, modern analytical and scientific approaches, the bioactivity of isolated phytochemicals and their analogues. This volume is a collection of important research on this field which will strengthen scientific advancement on natural product-based drug discovery and will be helpful for the scientific community.