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TOPICAL COLLECTIONS

Current Research Methods in Natural Product-Inspired Drug Discovery

Guest Editor

Hoang V. Le

National Institute on Drug Abuse (National Institutes of Health)

<p><span style="color: rgb(34, 34, 34);">Dr. Hoang Le is a Program Officer at the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA). Dr. Hoang Le has an extensive background in organic and medicinal chemistry. He graduated from the University of California, Berkeley with a B.S. degree in chemistry and received a Ph.D. degree in organic chemistry from Cornell University. He then conducted his postdoctoral research in medicinal chemistry and enzymology under the guidance of Dr. Richard Silverman at Northwestern University. Before joining NIDA, he was an Assistant Professor of Medicinal Chemistry in the Department of BioMolecular Sciences in the School of Pharmacy at the University of Mississippi. The research in his independent lab was inspired by natural products and aimed to discover and develop novel derivatives of natural products that are biologically relevant for the treatment of cancers, infectious diseases, and neurological disorders, including substance use disorder. His recent work focused on ligands of the kappa opioid receptor, including ligands based on the natural product salvinorin A for treatment of pain and substance use disorder. His current work at NIDA focuses on developing and expanding a portfolio of grants on the chemistry and pharmacology of opioid receptors with special emphasis on novel ligands and molecular probes derived from natural product scaffolds.</span></p>

Collection Overview

Natural products extracted from plants, animals, fungi, or bacteria, have been used in traditional medicine in many cultures for centuries to treat various diseases. Because natural products are synthesized by living organisms, they are naturally optimized for various biological functions, such as binding to specific biomolecules or target proteins. Natural products possess tremendous structural and unique chemical diversity and continue to provide an unmatched source of new therapeutic agents and chemical scaffolds for drug discovery.

The diversity of these molecules also enables scientists to study a wide range of potential drug targets and mechanisms of action and has led to the discovery of many new drug classes and novel approaches to treating diseases. Recent technological advances allow scientists to identify and isolate natural products more efficiently than ever. Furthermore, using computational methods has allowed scientists to predict the biological activities of natural product derivatives and accelerate the drug discovery process.

This collection of research methods aims to share modern methods in drug discovery inspired by natural products and to introduce research methods in the labs of scientists from many different fields involved in drug discovery, including medicinal chemistry, pharmacognosy, and pharmacology.