ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses reverse and forward pharmacology, two approaches adopted for the purpose of drug-discovery. Reverse pharmacology is defined as the science of integrating documented clinical/experimental hits, into leads by transdisciplinary exploratory studies and further developing these into drug candidates by experimental and clinical research. Pharmacognosy and classical pharmacology are both often contrasted with reverse pharmacology, that is, working from the target backward to identify new drugs starting with screening libraries of compounds for affinity for a particular target. Reverse Pharmacognosy can contribute to addressing certain issues in current drug discovery like lack of clinical candidates and toxicity by exploiting existing data from Pharmacognosy. Integrating pharmacognosy and reverse pharmacognosy in the research process may provide an efficient and rapid tool for natural drug discovery.
