Botanical Therapeutics: Discovery, Development and Manufacture - Prospects and Constraints

Phytochemical and synthetic chemistry based pharmaceutical industry severed the historical connection between food, plants and medicines. Discovering new chemical entity (NCEs) based drugs through high throughput screening methods may reconnect plants and human health at a high level of technological sophistication. Botanical therapeutics with multi-component that comprise functional foods, nutraceuticals, dietary supplements and botanical drugs hold several advantages over conventional drugs that may earn them a more prominent place in the medicine of the next generation. Botanical therapeutics and deliver mixtures of multi functional molecules with synergistic and potentiating effects and pleiotropic targeting at a reasonable cost and with some regulatory constraints. They are well suited for long-term disease prevention in an era of genetic testing and increased life expectancy. They also provide additional vehicles for delivering health and wellness. Technologies that address the needs of discovery, development and manufacturing of multi-components botanical therapeutics are emerging, include computational and bioinformatics approaches, cell based gene expression and high-content screening systems. Phytochemical elicitation and unique plant cultivation / extraction methods designed to optimize the production of bioactive, standardized overall extract compositions and assure batch to batch product consistency are needed. Nevertheless, multi-components botanical therapeutics carry risks associated with potential interactions with conventional drugs and adverse reactions, which are difficult to detect and diagnose. Acceptance by medical community and pharmaceutical industry, safety, poor standardization and quality control, and difficulties in identification of active ingredients and determination of their complex mode of action are some of the problems. Solving these problems will accelerate the merger of grocery stores with pharmacies and agriculture with chemical manufacturing and provide physicians and patients with broader and more individualized choices of disease prevention and treatment. Multi-components botanical therapeutics will be useful for next generation.