Main description:

This book addresses the highly relevant and complex subject of research on drugs from natural products, discussing the current hot topics in the field. It also provides a detailed overview of the strategies used to research and develop these drugs.

Respected experts explore issues involved in the production chain and when looking for new medicinal agents, including aspects such as therapeutic potential, functional foods, ethnopharmacology, metabolomics, virtual screening and regulatory scenarios.

Further, the book describes strategic methods of isolation and characterization of active principles, biological assays, biotechnology of plants, synthesis, clinical trials and the use of tools to identity active principles.

Contents:

1. Medicinal plants and Phytomedicines

2. Biotechnology as strategy to produce bioactive principles from higher plants

3. Metabolomic aspects to study medicinal plants

4. Functional foods as source of bioactive principles: some marked examples

5. Contribution of ethnopharmacology to the research and development of new drugs

6. Molecular and physiological actions of flavonoids: need for clinical trials to assess its benefits in human disease 7. Current approaches to isolation and structural elucidation of active compounds from natural products

8. Stereoselective synthesis of biologically active natural products

9. Natural products as source of anticancer agents: current approach and perspectives

10. NAPROC-13, an useful database to identify active compounds from natural products

11. Translational research in natural products and drug research

12. Virtual screening as a tool to discovery active principles from natural products

13. Current regulatory scenario of herbal products in Europe and comparison with other countries

14. Development and use of polymeric nanoparticles for the encapsulation and administration of plant extracts

15. Phenotype-guided natural products discovery using cytological profiling 16. The importance of Traditional Chinese Medicine in drug discovery 17. Quality control and adulterants in herbal medicinal products