The medicinal potential of natural products for the development of anti- influenza agents.

Influenza neuraminidase (NA) is an important target for designing anti-influenza drugs. By now, three inhibitors, zanamivir, oseltamivir and peramivir have been approved. However, in recent years, the potential threat of influenza pandemics and constant emergence of new drug-resistant influenza virus strains have weaken the defensive role of the current anti-influenza drugs. From another point of view, in this review we focused on some novel NA inhibitors which were mainly derived from natural products that had a variety of structural scaffolds, such as flavonoids, xanthones and diarylheptanoids. Besides interfering the function of NA, some of these compounds also can potently inhibit the replication of influenza virus. It is hoped that these compounds could be the source of leads and provide a guide for discovering new potent anti-influenza virus agents.