Natural products are very attractive for development of medicine. Their structure and bioactivities are often beyond human knowledge and imagination. We have developed isolation methods for target protein-oriented natural products so as quickly to discover bioactive compounds from natural resources. This review summarizes our recent results including protein beads methods for neural stem cells differentiation activators and new cancer drug candidates. Syntheses of isolated compounds are described. We also developed protein plate method for identification of protein-protein interaction inhibitors. Because protein binding ability is tightly related to bioactivity, protein-based natural products isolation is a powerful means to find new candidate medicines.
Keywords: cancer cell; natural product; neural stem cell; protein bead; protein plate.