Developments toward the production of diverse natural-product-like compounds: Diversity-oriented synthesis and diversity-enhanced extracts

Natural products and their derivatives have proven very useful in the search for biologically active compounds and in the development of new drugs because of their structural diversity. However, new approaches that may increase the chemical diversity of such natural products must be developed in order to retain the future usefulness of these compounds. Diversity-oriented synthesis (DOS) has recently emerged as an efficient methodology for constructing complex and diverse compounds from simple and similar precursors. Through the combination of natural product chemistry and DOS, we therefore propose a new approach, diversity-enhanced extracts, for increasing the diversity of natural-product-like compounds. This review describes recent developments toward the production of diverse natural-product-like compounds by DOS based on natural products and direct chemical derivatization of natural extracts, including diversity-enhanced extracts.