(iii) The belief that natural products are somehow incompatible with high-throughput screening, and (iv) that they are difficult to isolate or synthesize 7. (ii) The difficulty of patent protection for natural products, especially since the publication of the “Guidance for Determining Subject Matter Eligibility of Claims Reciting or Involving Laws of Nature, Natural Phenomena, & Natural Products” 5, 6. Reasons for this are among others: (i) the legitimate concerns about the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity and the Nagoya protocol which regulates the sovereign rights of genetic resources, resulting in many years of legal uncertainty regarding derived rights 3, 4. Over the past few decades, drug discovery has shifted mainly to high-throughput screening of large chemical libraries while research on natural products has diminished 1, 2. Because their therapeutic potential is still under-scrutinized, we propose that this be explored more vigorously with present-day methods. Moreover, they also offer attractive opportunities for lead optimization or even fragment-based drug discovery. We show that, contrary to generally held belief, most EO components meet current-day requirements of medicinal chemistry for good drug candidates. Here we evaluate selected physicochemical parameters, used in conventional drug discovery, of EO components present in a range of commercially available EOs. EO components occupy a special niche in chemical space, that offers unique opportunities based on their unusual physicochemical properties, because they are typically volatile and hydrophobic. Nevertheless, they are still considered products that are mainly used in complementary and alternative medicine. Some EOs, their components or derivatives thereof have been approved as drugs.
In recent decades, randomized controlled (clinical) trials have supported efficacy in specific therapeutic indications for a few of them. Essential oils (EOs) have been used therapeutically for centuries.
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