2.1. Serve as Extremely Useful Natural Drugs
On a recent survey conducted by the World Health Organisation (WHO) globally, around 20,000 medicinal plants are being used profusely either in pharmceuticalindustry or in folk medicines. Interestingly, about 1.4% do possess well-established, widely—proven and broadly accepted unequivocally active constituents.
De Souza et al.* in 1982 opined on a serious note that—“the usual success rate of discovering new drugs from natural sources is solely based not only on the conception but also on the implementation of ingenious comprehensive strategies which invariably explore and exploit the untrapped potential of the natural sources”. In fact, there are four ways by which the above objectives may be
accomplished reasonably and legitimately, such as:
(a) Isolation of novel genotypes from marine and terrestrial ecosystems,
(b) Genetic engineering: creating novel and altered genotypes,
(c) Biochemical manipulation of selected pathways, and
(d) Supersensitive and specific selection techniques and evaluation for varied bioactivities.
* De Souza, NJ et al., Annu. Rep. Med. Chem, 17, 301, 1982.
A few typical examples of drugs derived from natural sources and their respective uses are given in Table 1.4.
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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.
