Novel Therapeutic Agents from Plants

CARPINELLA MARÍA CECILIA; MAHENDRA RAI

Science Publisher

Lugar: Enfield NH; Año: 2009 p. 478

978-1-57808-546-0

Preface Since the advent of synthetic drugs, the use of natural products has diminished. However, the diversity of natural molecules still surpasses that from synthetic compounds, and this ensures that natural products will continue to be important for drug discovery. Besides, many of current used synthetic drugs are responsible for side-effects and sometimes are extremely costly. Plants and microorganisms are capable of producing secondary metabolites with a wide range of biological activities which are involved in defensive and protective processes in them. This property of determined organisms should be exploited by man for obtaining new therapeutic preparations or to serve as leading molecules for the synthesis of analogues The use of plants in medicine has evolved because, from the biochemical point of view, they produce different chemical compounds with particular modes of action for controlling pathogenic organisms or inhibiting processes involved in many diseases. There are a large number of chemical structures and only a few are well known. The different chemical structures present in a plant derived extract ensure that target organisms do not develop resistance, and have high effectiveness due to different modes of actions and/or synergism between compounds. Most of these secondary metabolites are harmless, thus ensuring safe clinical use. A scientific approach to understand the relationship between active chemicals and cure of diseases is recent. More properties and characteristics of the wide range of natural compounds are come to light everyday. Such voluminous data has to be compiled and discussed on the basis of scientific criteria. Although there are several books on natural drugs the present book covers multiple curative aspects of natural chemicals. This is a complete review of medicinally active metabolites produced by nature addressed from different approaches. The book describes the effects of natural extracts and/or their isolated compounds and also gives an update of its modes of action, production and commercialisation.                                                                                               Maria Cecilia Carpinella                                                                                                          Mahendra Rai