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Biodiversity plays a vital role in maintaining human and animal health because numerous plants, animals, and fungi are used in medicine to produce vital vitamins, painkillers, antibiotics, and other medications. [1] [2] [3] Natural products have been recognized and used as medicines by ancient cultures all around the world. [4]
Pharmacognosy is the study of crude drugs obtained from medicinal plants, animals, fungi, and other natural sources. [1] The American Society of Pharmacognosy defines pharmacognosy as "the study of the physical, chemical, biochemical , and biological properties of drugs, drug substances, or potential drugs or drug substances of natural origin ...
Angiosperms (flowering plants) were the original source of most plant medicines. [9] Human settlements are often surrounded by weeds used as herbal medicines, such as nettle, dandelion and chickweed. [10] [11] Humans were not alone in using herbs: some animals, such as non-human primates, monarch butterflies and sheep ingest plants when they ...
Extracts from Camptotheca (the "happy tree" or "cancer tree") were used to develop the chemotherapeutic drug Topotecan. Plant sources of anti-cancer agents are plants, the derivatives of which have been shown to be usable for the treatment or prevention of cancer in humans. [1] [2]
Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/Getty; Biwer et al.Throughout the Andes, stretching skyward from dry tropical rainforests, is an inconspicuous tree that can turn your mind ...
The opioid analgesic drug morphine is a natural product derived from the plant Papaver somniferum Plants are a major source of complex and highly structurally diverse chemical compounds ( phytochemicals ), this structural diversity attributed in part to the natural selection of organisms producing potent compounds to deter herbivory ( feeding ...
Many synthetic and semisynthetic drugs are structural modifications of the alkaloids, which were designed to enhance or change the primary effect of the drug and reduce unwanted side-effects. [208] For example, naloxone , an opioid receptor antagonist , is a derivative of thebaine that is present in opium .
Sinecatechins, the first botanical drug approved by the US FDA, is an extract from the leaves of Camellia sinensis.. A botanical drug is defined in the United States Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act as a botanical product that is marketed as diagnosing, mitigating, treating, or curing a disease; a botanical product in turn, is a finished, labeled product that contains ingredients from plants.