Natural Endoperoxides as Drug Lead Compounds.

Natural products, especially bioactive molecules as drug lead compounds, have attracted extensive attention in health promotion and in drug discovery and development. It is essential to understand the structures and functional mechanisms of these lead molecules prior to drug development. This review provides comprehensive information for more than 130 newly reported peroxides appeared in the literature in the recent years. The compounds are natural peroxides with bioactivities. While some of them appeared in previous reviews, a great number of newly-found natural peroxides with up-dated information are extensively reviewed in this article, which focuses on the biological activities based on various structural classes including monoterpenoids, sesquiterpenoids, diterpenoids, sesterterpenoids, triterpenoids and steroidal peroxy compounds isolated from terrestrial and marine sources. These natural peroxides are valuable sources in drug discovery with antitumor and antimalarial activities.