Dear Paul:
I'm assuming you are being a touch facetious and perhaps a bit
disingenuous. If not:
Indeed it sounds like a great idea (although far from original,
remember Fleming and penicillin?), we in the pharmaceutical industry
have done and are doing just that (for more than 50 years). In the
late 1940s, the era of Selman Waksman (who discovered tetracycline)
and Benjamin Duggar (who discovered tetracycline) the search for
natural products that have antibacterial properties was at its peak.
Many interesting agents were discovered and developed.
Now what you have to do is study the "law of diminishing returns" an
economic concept that generally applies to most fields of endeavor.
And while you are at it perhaps you should try checking out the dozen
or so journals devoted to antimicrobial agents and natural products -
there you will see the extent of the effort devoted to new
antibacterial agents by both academic, government and industrial
scientists.
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, very little knowledge is
very dangerous.
Steve Projan
Wyeth-Ayerst Research
