Chemistry and Medicinal Chemistry

Natural Products and Heterocyclic Chemistry

Natural products are chemical compound produced by a living organism that is found in nature. Natural products remain the best sources of drugs and drug leads, natural products research in favor of HTP screening of combinatorial libraries during the past 2 decades. Natural products possess structural and chemical diversity that is unsurpassed by any synthetic libraries. More than 40% of the chemical scaffolds found in natural products are absent in now-a-days medicinal chemistry repertoire.  Based on various chemical properties, combinatorial compounds occupy a much smaller area in molecular space than natural products. Natural products undergo primary metabolites and secondary metabolites, Natural products under go biosynthesis and produce carbohydrates and fatty acids and polypeptides. Their main sources are from prokaryotic, bacteria, archaea, eukaryotic, fungi, plants, animals.   Heterocyclic chemistry deals with the synthesis, properties, and applications of heterocyclic compound. A cyclic organic compound containing all carbon atoms in ring formation is referred to as a carbocyclic compound. If at least one atom other than carbon forms a part of the ring system then it is designed as a hetero-cyclic compound. Nitrogen, oxygen and sulfur are the most common heteroatoms but heterocyclic rings containing other hetero atoms are also widely known. An enormous number of heterocyclic compounds may be classified into aliphatic and aromatic. Heterocyclic ring may comprise of three or more atoms which may be saturated or unsaturated. Also the ring may contain more than one hetero atom which may be similar or dissimilar.