The trend in recent years has been to focus attention on rational drug design and computational (virtual) screening approaches, highlighting a synthetic chemical approach.  However, rational drug design has proven to be primarily effective in refining structural leads that interact with a particular target, for example, an enzyme or receptor.  The need still remains to uncover the initial structural lead that interacts with the therapeutic target.  The myriad of structurally diverse compounds found in nature offers a unique source for drug discovery.  It is in this scenario that natural products research plays an important role.

In this review I will cover our efforts to isolate and identify compounds from natural products with anticancer and enzyme inhibitory properties, with reference to other related published literature.