Medicinal Plants
A possibility for fast and efficient hit identification based on ethnobotanics.
Products found in nature play a major role as starting material in drug discovery. For instance, of the 974 small molecules approved as medicinal drugs between 1981 and 2006, 63% were either natural compounds or inspired by nature (bearing a scaffold of a biological molecule). However, despite the enormous potential of natural products, only a minor fraction of the molecules encountered in living species have been tested for their bioactivity up to date. For this reason, Intelligent Pharma has a research project that involves hit identification amongst natural products (ethnobotanics) using artificial intelligence.
Intelligent Pharma has created four groups made up of ethnobotanic experts, which work on the Spanish Mediterranean coast. They provide us with a wide variety of endemic, rare and unexplored plants encounterer in four geographic areas: Serra de Mariola (Alicante), Semi-Arid (Alicante), La Garrotxa (Girona), and the Catalan Prepyrinees (Lleida). All four locations feature special climatologic and soil properties that stimulate the occurance of rare and endemic plants. For example, La Garrotxa features a supramediterranean climate in combination with volcanic soils. All four locations are rural regions where the population still uses plants to treat their pathologies. We have identified differnt plants potentially active in a wide variety of therapeutic areas, such as CNS disorders, dermatology, oncology, cardiovascular, respiratory, etc.
For every new project, Intelligent Pharma ethnobotanic experts interview the inhabitants to identify potential active species. In our current database, 1,700 species with their potential activities are already listed. Upon request, the plants are colleced and sent to the client. To facilitate the following experimental work consisting of extraction and screening, Intelligent Pharma provides the customer with specific extraction instructions based on the ethnobotanics information.
The four regions where Intelligent Pharma looks for species with potential pharmaceutical activity are indicated in blue on the map. The two red fields, marking Cocentaina (Alicante) and Olot (Girona), point to Intelligent Pharma´s logistic centers where plants are centralized and sent to the customers.
For more information about this service, please send a message to info@intelligentpharma.com. Illustrative scientific articles about the topic are given below:
- D. J. Newman. Natural Products as Leads to Potential Drugs: An Old Process or the New Hope for Drug Discovery? J. Med. Chem. (2008), 51, 2589-2599.
- T. Tarragó, S. Frutos, R. A. Rodriguez-Mias & E. Giralt. Identification of traditional Chinese medicinal plants with prolyl oligopeptidase inhibitory activity using 19F-NMR. ChemBioChem (2006), 7(5), 827-833.