Abstract:

As a valuable resource for drug discovery, natural products remain largely unexplored. The cheminformatics analysis of natural product databases could help us know better about natural products, providing valuable information in drug design. In this study, we collected an in-home natural product library consisting of more than 220 000 molecules. The results showed that natural products were distributed more diversely than synthetic compounds and approved drugs in chemical space, and natural products still possessed better scaffold diversity. Besides, natural product scaffolds had more potential in some specific indications, such as antiarthritic, antihypertensive, antiallergic and analgesic. However, the utilization rate of natural product scaffolds is relatively low, especially in terms of potential indications. Therefore, we recommend the greater use of natural products while designing lead libraries.

Key words: Natural products, Feature analysis, Indication prediction