Novel medicines from nature

A meeting held at the Royal Society of Medicine brought together a wide variety of people to look at a number of scientific, legal and ethical issues associated with the discovery of new drugs from nature, including plant, marine and animal sources. The meeting began with a historic overview of plant medicine, followed by presentations and discussion on particular aspects of bioprospecting and biodiversity. This was followed by an overview of the methods that can be used to identify potentially important drugs from natural products. The session on biological sources was the most important of the meeting as far as the discovery of new drugs was concerned. The final session of the meeting was pharmaco-socioeconomic in nature.