Botanicals and its extracts: Anew drug discovery and development paradigm for chronic and age-related illnesses

Abstract

Advances in medical science have led to the cure and prevention of major diseases leading to longer lifespans. However, increasing lifespan has presented new medical challenges such as the rise of chronic and age-related illnesses. Chronic diseases are often associated with perturbations of multiple disease pathways and may require simultaneous modulation of multiple targets. Thus, the current paradigm of drug discovery and development based on a specific, single disease target may need to be complemented with a holistic systems-based approach. Although botanicals have historically been a source of new drugs, botanical extracts are not widely accepted in Western medicine. A relatively new regulatory approach with botanical extracts as a new class of drugs may pave the way for a new paradigm in discovering and developing therapies for chronic diseases.

Systematic review and meta-analysis of plant-derived antimicrobials in WHO priority pathogens

“…TM32 was isolated from of the medicinal plant Curcuma longa L. 96 Whilst the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has established a clear regulatory pathway for botanical drugs, to date, only two drugs have been approved. 97 It is the hope that the information obtained in these pre-clinical phase trials may one day work towards clinical testing in humans, yet until these laboratory studies progress through to clinical trials, the scientific community is a long way off ameliorating microbial resistance to drugs in humans using PDAms.…”