Bioprospecting for antituberculosis natural products – A review

There has been an increase in the reported cases of tuberculosis, a disease caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis, which is still currently affecting most of the world’s population, especially in resource-limited countries. The search for novel antitubercular chemotherapeutics from underexplored natural sources is therefore of paramount importance. The renewed interest in studies related to natural products, driven partly by the growing incidence of MDR-TB, has increased the prospects of discovering new antitubercular drug leads. This is because most of the currently available chemotherapeutics such as rifampicin and capreomycin used in the treatment of TB were derived from natural products, which are proven to be an abundant source of novel drugs used to treat many diseases. To meet the global need for novel antibiotics from natural sources, various strategies for high-throughput screening have been designed and implemented. This review highlights the current antitubercular drug discovery strategies from natural sources.