Natural Products Research Group

The overall objective of the research conducted by the UNB Natural Products Research Group is the isolation and identification of natural products with significant potential for application as therapeutic agents.

There is an obvious and urgent need to develop new drugs with novel modes of action to combat both infectious diseases and cancer.

The failure of combinatorial, genomic and rational approaches to provide lead chemical structures and the current renaissance of natural product chemistry as a major contributor to the drug discovery process emphasizes the importance of screening biodiversity for new chemical entities with novel biological activities.

Natural products research remains a valid and successful approach to drug discovery, especially when supplemented with the wealth of information available through the ethnobotanical and ethnopharmacological knowledge of the Canadian First Nations. This approach will continue to reveal unprecedented lead structures with desirable bioactivities and potencies that are desperately required to develop new therapies in our fight against drug resistant pathogens and cancers.