A question (of the nice variety) that students sometimes ask is about the relevance of natural products. The answer is a yes-and-no answer. I like to add an evolutionary take to the usual arguments, which is two-sided. A lot of secondary metabolites made by plants have evolved to kill you (mostly a herbivore), but your liver has evolved to be good at destroying them. For drug discovery, this has two opposite effects: the pro is a long list of antibacterial, antifungal and anticancer compounds to use or to adapt, the con is that their ADME (absorption, distribution, metabolism, and excretion) properties have frustrated medchemists for decades and decades. Herein, the two faces of this coin are explored not by advocating for or against natural products, but by exploring what they mean for medicinal chemistry.
