Selected Biological Evaluations

      Compounds of natural/semi-synthetic/fully synthetic origins have been screened for their biological activities including but not limited to cytotoxicity with an emphasis against a panel of cancer cell lines, antimicrobial, anti-inflammatory, and antiviral activities. More importantly, advanced techniques in computational chemistry such as molecular docking have been employed to gain insights and understanding of interactions between the biomolecular target(s) and the small molecule drug compounds which could lead to designing more efficacious drug-like candidates with fewer adverse side effects. Moreover, in order to ascertain new candidates with safer drug-like profiles, toxicity against relevant normal cell types has been determined. The ratios of efficacy over general toxicity, namely therapeutic indices (TI) or selectivity indices (SI), are also derived. These values are pivotal for candidate selection since a number of potential drug-like compounds may not advance to further stages including clinical trials because of the inherent general toxicity. Therefore, evaluating both efficacy and toxicity is important in advancing drug candidates through successful drug discovery process.