Abstract

APPLICABILITY OF REVERSE PHARMACOLOGY FOR THE ANTI MALARIAL AYURVEDA HERBAL DRUG DEVELOPMENT: AN OVERVIEW

Dr Chakrapany Sharma and Dr Manju Singhi, Dr Chandan Singh, Dr P. K. Dam

Abstract

Ayurveda, the ancient life science, has a history of over 4000 years of practice. It is a great living tradition that addresses health with a unique holistic approach. Currently, the Government of India has developed formal structures to regulate issues related to quality, safety, efficacy and practice of herbal medicines. Thus basic principle of Ayurveda is based on personalized approach can be used for creating personalized, customized or designer medicines. Therefore science of Ayurveda has the potential to revolutionize modern medicine and drug discovery processes. The credit for stimulating interest of Indian chemists and pharmacologists in medicinal plants should rightfully go to Sir Ram Nath Chopra who has been acclaimed as the „Father of Indian Pharmacology”. Gananath Sen laid the foundation of Reverse Pharmacology of medicinal plants by pursuing clinically documented effects of Ayurvedic drugs. Reverse Pharmacology (RP), designed as an academic discipline to reduce three major bottlenecks of costs, time and toxicity. RP (Reverse Pharmacology) can be perceived to comprise of three phases. The scope of reverse pharmacology is to understand the mechanisms of action at multiple levels of biology and to optimize safety, efficacy and acceptability of the leads in natural products based on relevant science. In this approach as the candidate travels a reverse path from „clinics to laboratory‟ rather than classical „laboratory to clinics. A wide array of modern drugs included the international pharmacopoeia have an origin in ethnopharmacology and traditional herbal medicine. Numerous plant extracts and their ingredients have unique pharmacological activities, such as anti-inflammatory, anti-diabetic, anti-carcinogenic, vasodilatory, anti-bacterial, anti-viral, anticonvulsant, sedative and antipyretic effects. Recently, a study carried out in Kenya and has proved the applicability of R P for new drug discovery for the treatment of Malaria. However, very few randomized-controlled studies have been carried out to precisely evaluate their therapeutic efficacy and safety. Nonetheless, for some of the botanical materials, there are relatively well-organized database available describing the therapeutic potential, and their active ingredients can be tested by exploiting modern scientific methods These desirable accidental discoveries are referred to as drug serendipity. There are many examples of medicinal plants and their constituents that have provided serendipitous bedside observations. Such clinical hits can be a basis of drug discovery and development. Advances in combinatorial chemistry and systems biology have created many drugable new entities. Reverse pharmacology integrates documented serendipitous clinical and experimental hits into leads that are further developed into drug candidates or formulations through more systematic and precisely designed preclinical and clinical research. A salient feature of this approach is the combination of knowledge learned from traditional or folk medicine and the modern technology to provide better and safer leads. RP is now getting formally established in India as an organized trans-discipline through efforts by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR). Authors made an attempt to explore the Reverse Pharmacology applicability to the Ayurveda Herbal Drug for the Development of Anti-malarial drug.

Keywords: Ayurveda, RP, Ethno-pharmacology, Pharmacoepidemiology, Phytomedicine, transdiscipline.