A given organism provides the investigator with a complex
library of unique bioactive constituents, analogous to the
library of synthetic compounds produced by combinatorial
chemistry techniques. The two approaches can be seen as
complementary to each other, with each providing access to
different lead structures. The task of the natural products
researcher is to select those compounds of pharmacological
interest through bioassay-guided fractionation of the “natural
combinatorial libraries” produced by extraction of organisms,
and then to collaborate in the optimization and development
of the lead natural product structure. As mentioned in section
4, the successful development of effective new drugs requires
suitable assays to guide not only the discovery of a bioactive
lead but also the evaluation of analogues developed through
optimization of the lead