Plants have been employed as a therapeutic agent since the dawn of time, and their applications have evolved alongside human civilization. Plants' healing potential was discovered by trial and error, and the knowledge was passed down verbally and through practise from generation to generation. Plants or plant parts were used as medicine before the 16th century, and during the 16th and 18th centuries, a mixture of plants or plant parts was employed as medication. Pure chemicals have been extracted from plants and utilised as medicine since the beginning of the 18th century. Today, over 6,00,000 plant-derived chemicals have been isolated from various plants, and 11 percent of the WHO's 252 basic and necessary medications are completely of plant origin, with a considerable proportion of synthetic drugs generated from natural precursors. Because of their unparalleled structural characteristics and functional diversity, plant-derived medications have been proven to be more stable, have fewer adverse effects, and have pleotropic druggability. Furthermore, plant-derived chemicals are generated within the living system and evaluated and adjusted periodically throughout time as part of the evolutionary process. Plants are the finest synthesisers of nanoparticles with a variety of medicinal properties, in addition to phytomolecules. These functional groups may bond with metal ions and produce nanoparticles in herbal medicines or plant extracts, such as C=C – alkenyl, C=N – amide, O=H – phenolic and alcohol, N=H – amine, C-H and COO – carboxylic acid, and so on. Cu, Co, Ag, Au, Pd, Pt, Zn, Mn, Ti, Ni, Fe, and other metal nanoparticles, as well as alloys of Au, Al, and Zn, were effectively biosynthesised. The versatility of plant-derived drugs in various aspects such as historical background, plant-derived drugs in modern medicine, importance of medicinal plants in drug discovery, plant-derived drugs - advantages and disadvantages, characteristic features of plant-derived drugs, major challenges in plant-derived drug discovery, value and market potential, approaches to plant-derived drug discovery, importance of phytochemical and pharmacological screening, drug discovery .
Author(S) Details
S. Sreekumar
Biotechnology & Bioinformatics Division, Saraswathy Thangavelu Centre, KSCSTE-Jawaharlal Nehru Tropical Botanic Garden and Research Institute, Puthenthope, Thiruvananthapuram, Pin 695 586, Kerala, India.
N. C. Nisha
Biotechnology & Bioinformatics Division, Saraswathy Thangavelu Centre, KSCSTE-Jawaharlal Nehru Tropical Botanic Garden and Research Institute, Puthenthope, Thiruvananthapuram, Pin 695 586, Kerala, India.
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