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The nineteenth century
Published in Michael J. O’Dowd, The History of Medications for Women, 2020
Peruvian bark, Cinchona officinalis, also known as ‘cinchona bark’, ‘Jesuits’ bark, ‘Cardinal’s bark’, ‘red bark’ (Cinchona pubescens), ‘bark’ and eventually as ‘Peruvian Cort.’, was the bark of an evergreen tree from Peru, Cinchona succirubra. Peruvian bark was introduced into Europe in 1640 and was first advertised for sale in England by James Thompson in 1658. It was made official in the London Pharmacopoeia of 1677 as cortex Peruanus (also as Cinchona officinalis) and was prescribed as a febrifuge, tonic and astringent. Carl Linnaeus, in his Materia Medica (1749) named the Peruvian bark ‘cinchona’, noting that it came from Loxa, in Peru, and that it was used for critical fevers.
Plant-Based Secondary Metabolites for Health Benefits
Published in Hafiz Ansar Rasul Suleria, Megh R. Goyal, Masood Sadiq Butt, Phytochemicals from Medicinal Plants, 2019
Monika Sharma, Jyotsana Dwivedi, Bhanu Kumar, Bramhanand Singh, A. K. S. Rawat
The recent research developments in natural products have introduced many new phytoconstituents, such as the popular Paclitaxel commonly known as Taxol obtained from Taxus brevifolia Nutt. Furthermore, Catharanthus roseus (L.) G. Don had contributed vinca alkaloids vinblastine and vincristine. Some other important anticancer drugs, like etoposide and teniposide, were derived from Podophyllum roots. Also, antimalarial drug quinine was isolated from the bark of Cinchona officinalis. World Health Organization (WHO) recommended antimalarial drug artemisinin that has its source from Artemisia annua. In addition to drugs, plant bioactive compounds are also flavoring agents, food additives, pesticides, and health supplements.25,104 According to a recent report by WHO, traditional medicines are extensively used by nearly 80% of the population throughout the world. Furthermore, 47% of anticancer drugs available in the market are from natural plants.94
Biodiversity Bioprospection with Respect to Medicinal Plants
Published in Jayanta Kumar Patra, Gitishree Das, Sanjeet Kumar, Hrudayanath Thatoi, Ethnopharmacology and Biodiversity of Medicinal Plants, 2019
Abhishek Kumar Dwivedy, Vipin Kumar Singh, Somenath Das, Anand Kumar Chaudhari, Neha Upadhyay, Akanksha Singh, Archana Singh, Nawal Kishore Dubey
Over the course of evolution through thousands of years, the plants have developed an array of phytochemicals that had managed their survivability by fighting against, infectious diseases, predator attack, and facilitated food availability. Most of the today’s pharmaceuticals constitute these plant-derived chemicals. The World Conservation Union (IUCN) in a recent survey found that 72,000 species of higher plants are used for extraction of medicines worldwide, constituting 17% of the higher plants of the world. The World Health Organization (WHO) has reported earlier that 80% of the world’s population relies on traditional medicines for their fundamental health care and the scenario remains the same even today (IUCN, 2006). And for this, the pharmaceutical, agricultural and cosmetic industries depend on plant biodiversity thriving in the wild for their raw materials. Cinchona officinalis (the Cinchona tree) from South America is the source of vital quinine and quinidine which are the milestones in the herbal drug industry for their effectiveness against malaria and cardiac arrhythmias, respectively (Efferth et al., 2007). Digitalis has provided the synthetic drugs digoxin and digitoxin which has proved high efficacy against cardiovascular disorders such as atrial fibrillation and even heart failure (Ahmed et al., 2006). Willow tree provides aspirin which is still the most commonly used remedy for pain and inflammation, all around the world (Vlachojannis et al., 2011). There are ample examples of plant metabolites that have been searched for beneficial bioactivity for the welfare of human beings and society.
Recent advances towards natural plants as potential inhibitors of SARS-Cov-2 targets
Published in Pharmaceutical Biology, 2023
Zhouman He, Jia Yuan, Yuanwen Zhang, Runfeng Li, Meilan Mo, Yutao Wang, Huihui Ti
Natural products, mainly plants, remain a rich source of novel therapeutic agents for the treatment of different human illnesses (Newman and Cragg 2020). Plant-derived active compounds often provide lead compounds for further drug discovery due to their special structures compared with synthetic small-molecule compounds. Chloroquine, the first small molecule approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to treat COVID-19, was inspired and developed from quinine, an old antimalarial agent isolated from the bark of Cinchona officinalis L. (Rubiaceae) because it shares the same quinoline core (Vandekerckhove and D'Hooghe 2015; Hoffmann et al. 2020). As natural products have been historically used in the treatment of respiratory infections, researchers have proposed to renew attention to natural products to treat COVID-19 (Rahman et al. 2022). The strategies applied to discover plant-derived natural products that inhibit SARS-CoV-2 are summarized including activity-guided fractionation, metabolomics, molecular docking (MD), network pharmacology, and machine learning approaches. We also focused on the latest research progress in targeting key steps in the SARS-CoV-2 replication cycle and the host immune system.