Sustainable Natural Product Drug Discovery: Biodiversity Protection, Ethical Sourcing, AI Screening, Green Chemistry, and Therapeutic Innovation

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Natural products remain important sources of chemical diversity and therapeutic innovation, yet their discovery and development can create ecological, ethical, technical, and translational pressures that are not resolved by natural origin alone. This article proposes an integrated sustainability framework for natural product drug discovery that positions biodiversity protection, ethical sourcing, computational prioritization, green chemistry, therapeutic evaluation, and lifecycle oversight as interdependent decision conditions. The framework begins with conservation-aware definition of the discovery question and assessment of species vulnerability, habitat pressure, harvesting risk, provenance, access and benefit-sharing principles, traditional knowledge considerations, and source-country relationships. It then incorporates natural product databases, dereplication, virtual screening, bioactivity and safety prediction, and uncertainty-aware molecular prioritization to reduce unnecessary collection and experimental burden. Green extraction, safer solvent selection, sustainable synthesis, biocatalysis, biotechnology-enabled production, waste reduction, energy reduction, and process intensification are treated as conditional design options rather than independent proof of sustainability. Therapeutic innovation is linked to target relevance, mechanistic plausibility, safety, developability, validation planning, supply feasibility, equity considerations, and expert and stakeholder oversight. The principal contribution is a stage-gated conceptual framework that connects ecological stewardship and ethical governance with computational, chemical, pharmacological, and translational decision-making. The framework supports responsible discovery planning but does not establish environmental validation, ethical certification, legal sufficiency, therapeutic effectiveness, regulatory acceptance, or commercial readiness.