Functional versus chemical diversity: is biodiversity important for drug discovery?

• Prospecting the full biodiversity of nature to find leads for new drugs is not necessary. Because finding leads is aimed at identifying biological activity, structure is of secondary importance. Furthermore, although natural chemical diversity might be unrivalled, functional diversity is bound to be considerably less. It is likely that many millions of chemically distinct molecules exist in nature but it is inconceivable that the number of different biological functions is near this number. This is corroborated by knowledge obtained from the genome sequences of an increasing number of species. It is unlikely that ligands for specific molecular targets are restricted to one species and even individual compounds are often found in more than one species. Important molecular mechanisms are likely to be ubiquitous and there are no a priori reasons to assume that some are restricted to, for example, tropical rainforests. Thus, there are no obvious advantages of ‘biodiversity prospecting’, which will, possibly, endanger fragile ecosystems in the search for rare species.

Ämnesord

MEDICIN OCH HÄLSOVETENSKAP  -- Medicinska och farmaceutiska grundvetenskaper -- Farmaceutiska vetenskaper (hsv//swe)

MEDICAL AND HEALTH SCIENCES  -- Basic Medicine -- Pharmaceutical Sciences (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

functional diversity; biodiversity

; natural compounds; drug discovery; lead finding; chemical diversity

PHARMACY

FARMACI

Publikations- och innehållstyp

ref (ämneskategori)

art (ämneskategori)