Therapeutic Potential of Natural Pharmacological Agents in the Treatment of Human Diseases

The importance of natural products produced by living organisms from the nature for health and disease treatment has been immense throughout the human evolution. Several natural products derived from plants for thousands of years have been traditionally used to treat various types of human illnesses including general injuries, wound healing, and pain. Natural products have been shown to possess significant pharmacological activities that regulate various vital cell signaling pathways that cause mitogenic, cyto-toxic, and genotoxic reactions leading to various disease pathologies. Modern synthetic and combinatorial chemistry associated with the new technological tools such as genomics, proteomics, and metabolomics paved wider use of natural products. Nowadays, most of the natural products are processed and developed as potential pharmacological agents with effective antioxidative, antimitotic, anti-infective, anti-inflammatory, antiangiogenic, and anticarcinogenic properties. In fact, some natural products have been employed as lead compounds to obtain highly biologically relevant semisynthetic pharmacological derivatives with increased efficiency and efficacy for the therapeutic use. The prosperity of knowledge we are assembling from the past several decades will significantly inspire us to develop these natural products as novel potential drugs for future therapeutic strategies. This special issue compiles 38 excellent manuscripts, including clinical studies, research articles, and reviews, which provides comprehensive evidence demonstrating the significance of natural plant and microbial-derived products in human health and disease. The review articles of this special issue discuss the importance of some natural products derived from various types of plant species that are involved in maintaining the human health and their potential role in preventing various pathological conditions ranging from bacterial infections to cancer. An excellent review article by M. Gangwar et al. described in depth pharmacological use of Mallotus philippinensis Muell. Arg (Euphorbiaceae), a widely grown perennial shrub in the outer Himalayan region. This review describes how various natural products such as flavonoids, phenols, coumarins, and terpenoids derived from these plant species exhibit various medicinal properties and how these products could be used in the modern medicine. A comprehensive review article by T. Sham et al. discussed the significance and popularity of traditional Chinese medicine in controlling hyperlipidemia. In particular, this article describes underlying mechanisms of nine specific single Chinese herbs and seven classical formulae of traditional Chinese medicine based on recent experimental and clinical data on hyperlipidemia. Another interesting review article by M. H. Boskabady et al. discussed the significant pharmacological effects of Carum copticum L. plant (the celery; also known …