Plant-derived natural product research aimed at new drug discovery

Abstract

Many important bioactive compounds have been discovered from natural sources using bioactivity-directed fractionation and isolation (BDFl) [Balunas MJ, Kinghorn AD (2005) Drug discovery from medicinal plants. Life Sci 78:431-441]. Continuing discovery has also been facilitated by the recent development of new bioassay methods. These bioactive compounds are mostly plant secondary metabolites, and many naturally occurring pure compounds have become medicines, dietary supplements, and other useful commercial products. Active lead compounds can also be further modified to enhance the biological profiles and developed as clinical trial candidates. In this review, the authors will summarize research on many different useful compounds isolated or developed from plants with emphasis placed on those recently discovered by the authors' laboratories as antitumor and anti-HIV clinical trial candidates.

Effect of Crude Leaf Extract of Bauhinia strychnifolia in BALB/c Mice Infected with Plasmodium berghei

“…Antimalarial drug development can follow several strategies, which range from minor modifications of existing agents to the design of novel agents that act against new targets [3]. Natural products and plant extracts have been important sources of different drugs currently available to treat severe malaria [4,5]. Quinine and derivatives of artemisinin are the two most important products of plants useful in clinical practice.…”

Serotonergic Properties of the Roots of Clerodendron capitatum

“…Plants carry on providing a valuable source of therapeutic compounds because of their enormous biosynthetic capacity [1,2] . A primary advantage of botanicals is their complex composition consisting of collections of related compounds having multiple activities that interact for a greater total activity [2][3][4] .…”

Induction of Apoptosis in Human Leukemia Cell (Jurkat) by Neolignans Isolated from Seeds of Licaria puchury-major

“…6) Natural products of plant origin offer a wide variety of bioactive compounds that could meet the demand for base compounds of drugs. 7,8) Over the past few decades, much attention has been focused on natural products as potential sources of novel anticancer drugs. [9][10][11][12][13][14] The therapeutic application of apoptosis has currently been used as a model for developing anticancer drugs, 15) because many chemotherapeutic drugs have been shown to induce apoptosis in cancer cells.…”