Nature as a Drug Reservoir

Did you know that more than half of the approved drugs from 1981 to 2014 are related to natural products?

Humankind has utilized nature as a drug reservoir for a long time and many famous drugs, including aspirin, paclitaxel (chemotherapy), penicillin, and artemisinin (for treating malaria fevers), are found in nature.

A lot of untapped natural resources are waiting for us to explore, but great challenges are hidden in the way.

Content of the lecture

Together, we will discuss examples of how we have discovered drugs from nature, so that we can all understand how to further investigate natural resources to find new drugs.

You will get an introduction to the challenges in natural products-based drug discovery, including:

1. how to stimulate the production of second metabolites in microorganisms
2. how to find a needle in a haystack – how do we pinpoint the bioactive compounds from a mixture
3. how we find the target of a drug, and
4. how we produce a natural product.

You will also learn about the currently available techniques to handle these challenges.

Teacher

Jianzhong Zhu, Institut for Lægemiddeldesign og Farmakologi.

Praktisk info

Dette oplæg foregår på engelsk.

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