Historically, natural products have been the major source of lead
compounds for antimicrobial drugs,5 but also are used in other application
fields, such as anti-cancer drugs, insecticides, anthelmintics,
painkillers, flavors, cosmeceuticals and crop protection. Nevertheless,
most big pharma companies have severely reduced their
research efforts on natural products during the last 20 years due
to high rediscovery rates of known molecules and a lack of innovative
screening approaches.6 Therefore, it is surprising that still the
majority of newly approved small-molecule drugs are natural products
or their derivatives