Finding Needles in Chemical Haystacks: Targeted Discovery of Bioactive Natural Products

Natural products remain one of the most important sources of bioactive compounds, yet identifying active molecules within complex natural extracts remains a major scientific challenge. Traditional bio-guided fractionation approaches are often time-consuming, labor-intensive, and may overlook low-abundance compounds with significant biological activity. This presentation discusses current strategies being developed to accelerate the targeted discovery of bioactive natural products from Azorean biodiversity. Focus will be given to ligand fishing approaches based on enzyme-functionalized magnetic particles, which enable the selective capture of compounds with affinity towards specific biological targets directly from complex mixtures. The integration of sustainable extraction methodologies, bioactivity screening, and targeted analytical workflows offers new opportunities for exploring the chemical diversity of terrestrial and marine organisms from the Azores. These approaches aim to improve the efficiency of natural product discovery while contributing to the valorization of regional biodiversity as a source of biologically relevant molecules.

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