Ayurveda and natural products drug discovery

This review attempts to portray the discovery and development of medicine from galenical to genomical, with a focus on the potential and role of ayurveda. Natural products, including plants, animals and minerals have been the basis of treatment of human diseases. Indigenous people derived therapeutic materials from thousands of plants; however discovering medicines or poisons remains a vital question. Ayurveda is a traditional Indian medicinal system being practised for thousands of years. Considerable research on pharmacognosy, chemistry, pharmacology and clinical therapeutics has been carried out on ayurvedic medicinal plants. Many of the major pharmaceutical corporations have renewed their strategies in favour of natural products drug discovery and it is important to follow systems biology applications to facilitate the process. Numerous drugs have entered the international pharmacopoeia through the study of ethnopharmacology and traditional medicine. For ayurveda and other traditional medicines newer guidelines of standardization, manufacture and quality control are required. Employing a unique holistic approach, ayurvedic medicines are usually customized to an individual constitution. Traditional knowledge-driven drug development can follow a reverse pharmacology path and reduce time and cost of development. New approaches to improve and accelerate the joint drug discovery and development process are expected to take place mainly from innovation in drug target elucidation and lead structure discovery. Powerful new technologies such as automated separation techniques, high-throughput screening and combinatorial chemistry are revolutionizing drug discovery. Traditional knowledge will serve as a powerful search engine and most importantly, will greatly facilitate intentional, focused and safe natural products research to rediscover the drug discovery process.