Active Nature Based Ingredients for Drug Discovery with Pivotal Role of Clinical Efficacy: Review and Prospective (Pages 4-18)
Rolf Teschke1 and Tran Dang Xuan2
1Department of Internal Medicine II, Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, Klinikum Hanau, Hanau, Academic Teaching Hospital of the Medical Faculty, Goethe University Frankfurt/ Main, Frankfurt/Main, Germany; 2Graduate School for International Development and Cooperation, Hiroshima University, Hiroshima, 739-8529, Japan
DOI: https://doi.org/10.12970/2308-8044.2020.08.02
Download PDFAbstract: There is much clinical and scientific interest in finding among natural products additional active ingredients as sources that could help develop new nature-based drugs and assist conventional and herbal drugs currently available for treating human diseases. Previous and current nature based drugs were derived preferentially from plants including fungi, in addition to bacteria, and rarely also products obtained from animals or maritime sources like algae. Future approaches will likely focus on new drugs using mostly phytochemicals contained in plants known for their potential of therapeutic efficacy, studied as traditional herbal medicines including the traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). As a cautionary, new herbal drugs will only be accepted by consumers and regulatory agencies if efficacy for certain well defined diseases has been established using randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and if severe adverse effects had not been observed, providing thereby a favorable profile of benefits over risks. Additional clinical research should consider tropical plants with their amazing diversity and availability in high numbers of different plants in tropical forests although concerns currently emerge that plant numbers may be reduced and diversity be impaired due to political, economic, and ecologic tropical forest mismanagement. Much attention also focused more recently on the Sustainable Development Goal 3 (SDG3) that supplements the 2030 UN Agenda by inspiring ideologies and implementation concerning global health and wellbeing. In conclusion and considering these goals, new drugs derived from natural products could help improve health conditions and maintain wellbeing.
Keywords: Herbs, Tropical plant diversity, Herbal therapy, Randomized controlled trials, Antioxidants, Reactive oxygen species, Polyphenols, Herbal Traditional Chinese Medicine, Traditional herbal medicine. Read more