Question

Preclinical and clinical trials usually require large amounts of the drug candidate but a natural product may not be able to be extracted from the environment in sufficient quantity. What strategy can be used to overcome this difficulty?

Answer 1

Many natural products extracted from natural sources have good potential to be a drug candidate. Before getting in to market any drug molecule has to pass through many priclinical and clinical trials. For these trials and studies large amount of drug compund is required. However, it is difficult to extract such large quantity from natural sources because its low concentration in the source, tedious extraction procedures and difficulty in sepration etc. To overcome this obstacles, chemist genrally design new synthetic pathways to synthesize the molecule in lab. However, some times if it is difficult or large cost is involved, then chemist do try to find ulternative similar molecules which may shows similar activity on target protiens and then they do synthesize the molecules to use it in preclinical or clinical studies.