Abstract

Plant based Drugs-Mechanism based Targeting

Sampath Parthasarathy, Professor & Associate Dean for Research, University of Central Florida

Botanical chemicals and other natural products have attracted the attention of scientists for a long time. They posed attractive challenges for organic chemists and were an integral part of indigenous medicine for every human civilization and culture. The nature of their occurrence as “Natural Products” and their association with “Medicinal Food” have hampered their development as therapeutics, further complicated by the lack of controlled clinical trials.

During the past two decades, inflammation has been identified as a major contributor to many chronic diseases. Specific targets for controlling inflammation, both cellular and acellular, have become obvious. We have identified several natural products that have potent anti-inflammatory properties and have demonstrated their efficacies, both in vitro and in vivo. Based on these, specific pharmaceuticals, both mono-and poly-therapeutic agents could be developed and teste. However, hurdles remain regarding outcome measures that could be identified linking anti-inflammatory properties with specific disease markers.