Tropical Journal of Pharmaceutical Research

Review Article | OPEN ACCESS

Prenylation of Aromatic Secondary Metabolites: A New Frontier for Development of Novel Drugs

Alhassan M Alhassan , Musa I Abdullahi, Ahmad Uba, Abdulrashid Umar

Department of Pharmaceutical and Medicinal Chemistry, Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Usmanu Danfodiyo University, Sokoto, Nigeria;

For correspondence:- Alhassan Alhassan Email: alhasanma@yahoo.com Tel:+2348139766462

Received: 2 February 2013 Accepted: 4 January 2014 Published: 20 February 2014

Citation: Alhassan AM, Abdullahi MI, Uba A, Umar A. Prenylation of Aromatic Secondary Metabolites: A New Frontier for Development of Novel Drugs. Trop J Pharm Res 2014; 13(2):307-314 doi: 10.4314/tjpr.v13i2.22

© 2014 The authors.
This is an Open Access article that uses a funding model which does not charge readers or their institutions for access and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0) and the Budapest Open Access Initiative (http://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org/read), which permit unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited..

Abstract

Prenylation of aromatic secondary metabolites is an important process involved in the biosynthesis of many biologically active compounds in plants and animals. Many prenylated natural products have been shown to exhibit very good anti-tumor, anti inflammatory and antimicrobial activities. The addition of prenyl side chain to an aromatic secondary metabolite often affects its pharmacological activity. The aim of this review is to examine the influence of the prenyl side chain on the pharmacological activities of some classes of aromatic secondary metabolites and the potential application of prenylation in the development of novel drugs.

Keywords: Secondary metabolite, Prenylation, Aromatic, Ras antagonist, Novel drugs