For survival purposes, all living organisms rely on an ability to transform and interconvert a diverse set of organic and inorganic compounds in order to utilize them as a source of energy and as their structural building blocks. The presence of these crucial building molecules, the “primary metabolites” (amino acids, fatty acids, nucleosides, and sugars) can be considered synonymous with “life” since they are ubiquitous among all organisms. (more…)

A “paradigm shift” in drug discovery occurred in the early 19th century, marked by the isolation of pure bioactive entities from medicinal plants, beginning with the isoquinoline alkaloid, morphine. The purification of plant drug molecules such as atropine, cocaine, codeine, digitoxin, and quinine, later in the same century, proved to be significant not only for the extensive medicinal uses of these isolates, (more…)