Medicinal Natural Products, Third Edition, provides a comprehensive and balanced introduction to natural products from a biosynthetic perspective, focusing on the metabolic sequences leading to various classes of natural products. The book builds upon fundamental chemical principles and guides the reader through a wealth of diverse natural metabolites with particular emphasis on those used in medicine: sources, production methods, use as drugs, semi-synthetic derivatives and synthetic analogues, and modes of action are all extensively covered. Rapid advances have been made in the last decade in gene isolation and genetic engineering, leading to the elaboration of many biosynthetic pathways. Medicinal Natural Products has been extended and fully updated in this new edition to reflect and explain these new developments and other advances in the field. It retains the user-friendly style and highly acclaimed features of previous editions: * a comprehensive treatment of plant, microbial, and animal natural products in one volume * extensive use of chemical schemes with annotated mechanistic explanations * cross-referencing to emphasize links and similarities * boxed topics giving further details of medicinal materials, covering sources, production methods, use as drugs, semi-synthetic derivatives and synthetic analogues, and modes of action Medicinal Natural Products, Third Edition, is an invaluable textbook for students of pharmacy, pharmacognosy, medicinal chemistry, biochemistry and natural products synthesis.