Natural products

Natural products from medicinal plants, either as pure compounds or as standardized extracts, provide unlimited opportunities for new drug leads. Due to an increasing demand for seeking therapeutic drugs from natural products there is a need to develop analytical methodologies for different purposes which include the extraction, isolation and characterization of active ingredients in botanicals and herbal preparations. Various analytical methods available for the isolation, characterization and quantification of active ingredients from plant extracts which include various spectrometric and chromatographic methods along with some hyphenated techniques are discussed. The present review helps to design a method for the isolation, characterization and quantitative determination of major constituents from plants.

Ayurveda pharmacopeia is based upon herbal, mineral and herbo-mineral natural products but herbs takes first rank in pharmaceutics.  Herbal medicines have been widely used all over the world since ancient times and have been recognized by physicians and patients for their better therapeutic value as they have fewer adverse effects as compared with modern medicines. Unlike the existing allopathic system, the herbal remedies have hundreds and thousands of constituents that all work together against the diseases. Mostly, the conventional pharmaceuticals or pharmacognostical products in the market are rooted from natural products and their derivatives with herbal products playing pivotal role. All over the world, the research on these herbal remedies has been carried out in the different fields’ for instance pharmaceutical chemistry, pharmacognosy, pharmacology and clinical therapeutics.  ‘Nanotechnology’ is the new emerging technology in the drug discovery and it has the property of self targeting in the sense that without the attachment of a specific legend, these can be used for targeting, due to their distinctively small size, at the infected pathological areas. Some of such formulations are already present in the market and many more are expected to come by 2020 after their success in ongoing clinical trials. Drug delivery research is clearly moving from the micro- to the nanosize scale. Nanotechnology is therefore emerging as a field in medicine that is expected to elicit significant therapeutic benefit. Nanoparticles are able to adsorb and/or encapsulate a drug, thus protecting it against chemical and enzymatic degradation. A nanocarrier is nanomaterial being used as a transport module for another substance, such as a drug. Nanocarriers are currently used in drug delivery and their unique characteristics demonstrate potential use in chemotherapy. Herbal remedies may be selected as feasible drug candidate for delivery through a nano delivery system. It is being assumed that the “herbal remedy” with the nanocarriers will increase its potential for the treatment of various chronic diseases and health benefits. In this review, author has made an effort to explore this new approach is escalating the interest of number of scientists to improve and to accelerate the joint drug discovery and development of novel nano delivery systems for ayurveda herbal remedies.