The search for bioactive constituents or leading compounds from natural sources especially from Chinese herbal medicine has proved to be one of the most effective ways for the development of new drugs. This paper describes the progress in creating new drugs based on researches on natural products chemistry for many years and some interesting new trends emerging from recent literature.

The key point of study on the chemical constituents of individual Chinese herbal medicine has to be shifted to composite Chinese medicine especially for quality control in the future. The main theme of modernization for Chinese traditional medicine in the coming century will be the comprehensive study of the chemical constituents of composite Chinese medicine. Study on the bioactive principle of Chinese herbal medicine involves an integration of chemical study and bioassay with high throughput screening. It should be emphasized that the investigation of bioactive compounds for creating new drugs is the major task of the whole field. An intimate combination of basic study and drug development should be accomplished under a well-warrantee policy. Natural product research should be featured by the application of modern spectroscopic techniques, such as HPLC/MS/MS and HPLC/NMR and so on.