Natural Products have been important sources of useful drugs from prehistoric times to the present. This book gives an overview about this field and provides important recent contributions to the discovery of new drugs generated by research on natural products.
Total synthesis of natural products with interesting biological activities is paving the way for the preparation of new and improved analogs. The methods of combinatorial chemistry permit the selection of the best drug from a large number of candidates. Beyond synthesis and evaluation of organic molecules a number of new bioorganic methods are coming to the fore and will be discucced in this isue of the ERnst schering Research Foundation workshop proceedings.

Inhalt
1 Synthesis of Immunomodulatory Marine Natural Products.- 2 The Pederin Family of Antitumor Agents: Structures, Synthesis and Biological Activity.- 3 Biotherapeutic Potential and Synthesis of Okadaic Acid.- 4 Total Synthesis of Marine Natural Products Driven by Novel Structure, Potent Biological Activity, and/or Synthetic Methodology.- 5 Total Synthesis of Antifungal Natural Products.- 6 Combinatorial Methods to Engineer Small Molecules for Functional Genomics.- 7 Natural Products in Drug Discovery.- 8 Tools for Drug Discovery: Natural-product-based Libraries.- 9 Genetic Selection as a Tool in Mechanistic Enzymology and Protein Design.- 10 The Biotechnological Exploitation of Medicinal Plants.- 11 Multifunctional Asymmetric Catalysis.- 12 New Directions in Immunopharmacotherapy.- Previous Volumes Published in this Series.