Natural products have historically been the most consistent source of lead compounds in drug discovery, but their utilization by the pharmaceutical industry has declined in recent years. This is largely because most of the �low-hanging fruit� has already been metaphorically picked and it has become more and more difficult to identify unique compounds. In recent decades, wide application of LC/MS technique enabled us to pre-screen the chemical profile of the matrices and identify the materials containing unique molecules with pharmaceutical interest prior to the time-consuming process of isolation and elucidation. In this study, a total of 49 plant samples from 22 species collected from Namibia on the basis of bioassay results and traditional application were subjected to in-depth chemical profiling using LC/MS. Under LC/MS guided screening, most species failed to yield unique/new compounds (most of natural compounds were identified as flavonoids, other common polyphenols or triterpenes), and only two plant species were found to contain unique/novel structures. This is actually a very promising ratio of return for the small number of plant species chemically profiled in this investigation. Under this model, we were able to successfully narrow down the plant list to facilitate further natural products investigation, which is presently still very laborious work.

LC/MS-guided investigation of natural products chemistry: A case study of African medicinal plants

248th National Meeting (2014)

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