Plant and marine products: a promising hope in the search of therapeutics against dengue

Abstract Many natural products have been shown to be a rich source for therapeutics against various diseases. Approximately 60% of the drugs available in the market are either directly or indirectly derived from natural products. Although natural products serve as the primary source of leads for new drugs, these compounds still need to be effectively tailored to optimize their pharmacological properties. In-depth structural analysis and optimization are concurrently warranted to facilitate understanding of structure–activity relationships, enhancement of activity, and to explore their mechanisms of action. Therefore identification of the scaffold and the pharmacophoric features of drugs and natural products are essential. Although, high-throughput screening and combinatorial library screening are widely used for identifying new drug leads, the success rate has been significantly low. Hence, currently, the focus is toward establishing natural products as a basis for drug development. Despite advances in early detection and efforts to establish new therapies for various diseases, there is no clinically approved drug available in the market for treating dengue. Only one vaccine has been approved, recently; however, is in use in only a few countries. Dengue is the leading cause for death where it is endemic. The recent alarming increase in incidences warrants the development of more potent chemotherapeutic agents for the treatment of this disease. In this chapter, we describe the early developmental studies of natural products showing activity for treating dengue either derived from plant or marine sources.