Preface

Early man explored natural surroundings such as plants, animals, and minerals to find the remedies of different ailments. An alternative system of medicines such as Ayurveda, Unani, Kampo, and traditional Chinese medicinal products are used as dietary supplements and nutraceuticals reported to become a major part in the treatment of chronic disorders such as diabetes, cancer, malaria, arthritis, inflammation, liver disorders, and cardiac disorders. WHO Traditional Medicine Programme is also designed on the potential of ethnomedicine as a lead for drug discovery. Compounds from plants have been extracted to investigate novel therapeutics since the origin of medicine. Natural bioactive compounds from medicinal plants are inexplicably diverse in chemical structure, biological properties and the unmet therapeutic requirements attribute to develop an interest in the reemergence of bioactive natural compounds that will lead to isolation, structural characterization and finding pharmaceutical activity.

The book discusses the scope and approaches of drug discovery from natural products; cultivation, collection and processing of medicinal plants; Methods and high throughput techniques for extraction, isolation, and characterization of bioactive phytochemicals; pharmacological screening for its activity and formulation development as well as quality control of natural medicinal products. It also discusses the role of natural herbal products for the treatment of human diseases such as cancer, cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, obesity, inflammation, and neurological disorders. The last chapter of the book is devoted to regulations specified for natural medicinal products in a different region of the world. Each chapter concludes with a general reference section, which is a bibliographic guide to more advanced texts.

This book will provide in-depth information and comprehensive discussion over-extraction, isolation, structural characterization, pharmacological screening of bioactive phytochemicals as well as product development and regulatory perspective of herbal medicine. Researchers, industries, and students would be interested in this concise body of information. The contributing authors are drawn from a rich blend of experts in various areas of herbal medicine encompass drug discovery to product development.