Ethnomedicines in Antiviral Drug Discovery

This review is an attempt to portray the discovery and development of ethnomedicine and its phytophores against some important viral diseases from galenical to genomical period. Natural resource, particularly the plants and animals have been the basis of traditional treatment since the dawn of human civilization and the modern medicine (Allopathy) has gradually developed, over the years, by scientific and observational efforts from traditional practice. However, with the advent of antibiotics the role of traditional medicaments in infectious diseases was sidelined. Interestingly after the 1980’s, society realized the problem of drug resistance, emerging and reemerging pathogens, adverse drug reactions of many antimicrobials, particularly the antivirals. Hence, the lag phase for plant medicine is changing as impressive successes have been achieved with many botanicals like artemisinin, baccosides, curcumine, phyllanthins, quinghaosu, rauwolfia alkaloids, psoralens, picrosides, withanolides, steroidal lactones etc against many chronic and difficult-to-treat diseases. A whole range of chronic and lifestyle related diseases including HIV/AIDS, SARS, and Herpesvirus infection require new effective drugs. Considerable research has been carried out on pharmacognosy, chemistry, pharmacology and clinical therapeutics on Indian Ayurveda, Chinese traditional medicine, and traditional medicines of Africa in the last few decades. Many of the major pharmaceutical companies have renewed their strategies for drug development where there are no effective drugs or vaccine. Hence, many new compounds have entered the international pharmacopoeia through ethno-pharmacology and traditional medicine. Traditional knowledge-driven drug development can reduce both time and cost following a reverse pharmacology path. The automated separation techniques, highthroughput screening and combinatorial chemistry can help ethnomedicines to serve as a powerful search engine to facilitate intentional, focused and safe natural products research and to rediscover the drug discovery process. _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________