In general, natural drug substances offer four vital and appreciable roles in the modern system of medicine thereby adequately justifying their legitimate presence in the prevailing therapeutic arsenal, namely:
(i) Serve as extremely useful natural drugs.
(ii) Provide basic compounds affording less toxic and more effective drug molecules.
(iii) Exploration of biologically active prototypes towards newer and better synthetic drugs.
(iv) Modification of inactive natural products by suitable biological/chemical means into potent drugs.
REFERENCES
Ashutosh Kar (2003), Pharmacognosy and Pharmaco biotechnology, 2nd Edition
‘Handbook of Medicinal Herbs’ (2001), J.A. Duke, CRC-Press, London, 1st Edn.
William Charles Evans (2002), Trease and Evans Pharmacognosy 15th Edition by: Trease, Bailliere Tindall; Evans.
Ramstad (1956), E., ‘Modern Pharmacognosy’, McGraw Hill, London.
