ABSTRACT
Plants have developed an enormous diversity of secondary products and most of them have evolved to exhibit a certain biological activity, which is useful for survival of the individual plant or species. Since 1000 BC, the Chinese and Indian literatures have described the medicinal use of plants and many recipes are still in use (1-9). Such information from traditional medicine has been used for decades to isolate medicinally active secondary products. These efforts have been very successful and a number of drugs are on the market as a result of this strategy, including plant-derived anticancer compounds such as taxol, docetaxel, and camptothecin. However, despite these successes, the advent of combinatorial chemistry led to decreased interest in natural products. Recently, this trend has changed again, and natural products, including those from plant sources, are now being used as a general source of chemical diversity, which may well complement the chemical structures amenable to total organic synthesis. As by far most plant species have not yet been studied for biologically active secondary products, there is great potential to discover new drugs or lead structures for further development. In addition, modification of secondary product formation by molecular techniques and more extensive use of cell culture technologies may further increase the chances for successful drug discovery from plants.
