Phytochemistry Of Medicinal Plants

Phytochemicals from medicinal plants are receiving ever greater attention in the scientific literature, in medicine, and in the world economy in general. For example, the global value of plant-derived pharmaceuticals will reach $500 billion in the year 2000 in the OECD countries. In the developing countries, over-the-counter remedies and "ethical phytomedicines," which are standardized toxicologically and clinically defined crude drugs, are seen as a promising low cost alternatives in primary health care. The field also has benefited greatly in recent years from the interaction of the study of traditional ethnobotanical knowledge and the application of modem phytochemical analysis and biological activity studies to medicinal plants. The papers on this topic assembled in the present volume were presented at the annual meeting of the Phytochemical Society of North America, held in Mexico City, August 15-19, 1994. This meeting location was chosen at the time of entry of Mexico into the North American Free Trade Agreement as another way to celebrate the closer ties between Mexico, the United States, and Canada. The meeting site was the historic Calinda Geneve Hotel in Mexico City, a most appropriate site to host a group of phytochemists, since it was the address of Russel Marker. Marker lived at the hotel, and his famous papers on steroidal saponins from Dioscorea composita, which launched the birth control pill, bear the address of the hotel.

Plants produce secondary metabolites that humans harness for their own benefit. About half of drugs currently in clinical use are based on these chemicals found in nature. Chemistry of Natural Products covers secondary metabolites present in medicinal plants and their biosynthesis, biological activities, and isolation and separation techniques. This book is ideal for researchers in the areas of biochemistry, medicine, and pharmacology.

This new edition of the book by Jean Bruneton has been revised and expanded by over 200 pages, to reflect the most recent advances (natural or semisynthetic substances) as well as the most recent contributions to the therapeutic arsenal (antimalarial, antitumor, or antiretroviral agents). Building upon biosynthetic relationships, the author describes the different classes of metabolites and the drugs that produce them. Organized in four parts (primary metabolites, phenolics, shikimates and acetates, terpenes and steroids, alkaloids), the book develops for each class, phytochemical generalities, distribution, biosynthesis, extraction and quantitation methods, and biological aspects. For each raw material, it presents the origin, identity, production, composition, uses, processing and optimization: thus a considerable amount of botanical, chemical, analytical, pharmacological and therapeutic data is gathered into a particularly coherent compilation, for each product, the therapeutic indications and recommended usage are specified. An extensive index (about 3 000 entries) and nearly 500 recent references represent a valuable starting point for the reader's own lietrature research. This encyclopedia of pharmacognosy and phytochemistry is written for students, educators and professionals using plant resources in pharmacy, cosmetology, perfumery, botany, food technology and other fields.

Benefitting from phytochemicals in medicinal plants has lately gained increasingly more global relevance. The medicinal bioactivity might range from wound healing activity to anti-inflammatory and anti-viral effects. This work describes the challenging scientific process of systematic identification and taxonomy through molecular profiling and nanoparticle production from plant extracts until a final use for e.g. cancer or HIV treatment. From the table of contents PART A: Biodiversity & Traditional Knowledge. __Habitats and Distribution. __Threats and Conservation. __Culture, tradition and indigenous practices. PART B: Phytochemical constituents – Molecules and Characterization Techniques. __Alkaloids & Flavonoids. __Tannin, Saponnin and Taxol. __Terpenoids, Steroids and Phenolic Compounds. __Essential oil and their constituents. __Characterization Techniques used for the analysis of phytochemical constituents. PART C: Medicinal Bioactivity. __Anti-cancerous and Anti HIV activity. __Anti-microbial, Anti-inflammatory and wound healing activity. __Anti-oxidant activity. __Anti-diabetic activity. __Anti-Corona virus and anti-viral activity. PART D: Nanotechnology. __Nano-materials synthesis from medicinal plant extract. __Characterization and activity of medicinal plant based nanoparticles. PART E: Pharmacology/Drug discovery. __Plant phytochemicals in drug discovery. __Extraction and production of drugs. __System pharmacology and drug discovery.

Medicinal Plants: Chemistry, Biology and Omics reviews the phytochemistry, chemotaxonomy, molecular biology, and phylogeny of selected medicinal plant tribes and genera, and their relevance to drug efficacy. Medicinal plants provide a myriad of pharmaceutically active components, which have been commonly used in traditional Chinese medicine and worldwide for thousands of years. Increasing interest in plant-based medicinal resources has led to additional discoveries of many novel compounds, in various angiosperm and gymnosperm species, and investigations on their chemotaxonomy, molecular phylogeny and pharmacology. Chapters in this book explore the interrelationship within traditional Chinese medicinal plant groups and between Chinese species and species outside of China. Chapters also discuss the incongruence between chemotaxonomy and molecular phylogeny, concluding with chapters on systems biology and “-omics technologies (genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, and metabolomics), and how they will play an increasingly important role in future pharmaceutical research. Reviews best practice and essential developments in medicinal plant chemistry and biology Discusses the principles and applications of various techniques used to discover medicinal compounds Explores the analysis and classification of novel plant-based medicinal compounds Includes case studies on pharmaphylogeny Compares and integrates traditional knowledge and current perception of worldwide medicinal plants

Early anthropological evidence for plant use as medicine is 60,000 years old as reported from the Neanderthal grave in Iraq. The importance of plants as medicine is further supported by archeological evidence from Asia and the Middle East. Today, around 1.4 billion people in South Asia alone have no access to modern health care, and rely instead on traditional medicine to alleviate various symptoms. On a global basis, approximately 50 to 80 thousand plant species are used either natively or as pharmaceutical derivatives for life-threatening conditions that include diabetes, hypertension and cancers. As the demand for plant-based medicine rises, there is an unmet need to investigate the quality, safety and efficacy of these herbals by the “scientific methods”. Current research on drug discovery from medicinal plants involves a multifaceted approach combining botanical, phytochemical, analytical, and molecular techniques. For instance, high throughput robotic screens have been developed by industry; it is now possible to carry out 50,000 tests per day in the search for compounds which act on a key enzyme or a subset of receptors. This and other bioassays thus offer hope that one may eventually identify compounds for treating a variety of diseases or conditions. However, drug development from natural products is not without its problems. Frequent challenges encountered include the procurement of raw materials, the selection and implementation of appropriate high-throughput bioassays, and the scaling-up of preparative procedures. Research scientists should therefore arm themselves with the right tools and knowledge in order to harness the vast potentials of plant-based therapeutics. The main objective of Plant and Human Health is to serve as a comprehensive guide for this endeavor. Volume 1 highlights how humans from specific areas or cultures use indigenous plants. Despite technological developments, herbal drugs still occupy a preferential place in a majority of the population in the third world and have slowly taken roots as alternative medicine in the West. The integration of modern science with traditional uses of herbal drugs is important for our understanding of this ethnobotanical relationship. Volume 2 deals with the phytochemical and molecular characterization of herbal medicine. Specifically, It will focus on the secondary metabolic compounds which afford protection against diseases. Lastly, Volume 3 focuses on the physiological mechanisms by which the active ingredients of medicinal plants serve to improve human health. Together this three-volume collection intends to bridge the gap for herbalists, traditional and modern medical practitioners, and students and researchers in botany and horticulture.

This book starts with a general introduction to phytochemistry, followed by chapters on plant constituents, their origins and chemistry, but also discussing animal-, microorganism- and mineral-based drugs. Further chapters cover vitamins, food additives and excipients as well as xenobiotics and poisons. The book also explores the herbal approach to disease management and molecular pharmacognosy and introduces methods of qualitative and quantitative analysis of plant constituents. Phytochemicals are classified as primary (e.g. carbohydrates, lipids, amino acid derivations, etc.) or secondary (e.g. alkaloids, terpenes and terpenoids, phenolic compounds, glycosides, etc.) metabolites according to their metabolic route of origin, chemical structure and function. A wide variety of primary and secondary phytochemicals are present in medicinal plants, some of which are active phytomedicines and some of which are pharmaceutical excipients.

"This 2-volume book set, Phytochemistry and Pharmacology of Medicinal Plants, introduces and provides extensive coverage of 79 important medicinal plant species. Each chapter, written by noted experts in the field, focuses on one important medicinal plant, giving a brief introduction about the species and then delving into the plant's bioactive phytochemicals along with its chemical structures and pharmacological activities. A wide array of biological activities and potential health benefits of the medicinal plant-which includes antiviral, antimicrobial, antioxidant, anti-cancer, anti-inflammatory and antidiabetic properties as well as protective effects on liver, kidney, heart and nervous system-are given. An extensive collection of research literature on pharmacological activities on that species is reviewed. This volume, published under the AAP Focus on Medicinal Plants book series, edited by the accomplished editor, T. Pullaiah, who has taught, researched, written, and published on medicinal plants for over 35 years, will be an important reference resource for years to come for both new and experienced medicinal researchers"--