A natural love of natural products

Recent research oil the chemistry of natural products from the author's group that led to the receipt of the ACS Ernest Guenther Award in the Chemistry of Natural Products is reviewed. REDOR NMR and synthetic studies established the T-taxol conformation as the bioactive tubulin-binding conformation, mid these results were confirmed by the synthesis of compounds which clearly owed their activity or lack of activity to whether or not they could adopt the T-taxol conformation. Similar studies with the epothilones suggest that the current tubulin-bindin,, model needs to be modified. Examples of natural products discovery and biodiversity conservation in Suriname and Madagascar Lire also presented, and it is concluded that natural products chemistry will continue to make significant contributions to drug discovery.