The global popularity of herbal supplements and the promise they hold in treating various disease states has caused an unprecedented interest in understanding the molecular basis of the biological activity of traditional remedies. Herbal Medicine: Biomolecular and Clinical Aspects focuses on presenting current scientific evidence of biomolecular ef

Quality Control and Evaluation of Herbal Drugs brings together current thinking and practices for evaluation of natural products and traditional medicines. The use of herbal medicine in therapeutics is on the rise in both developed and developing countries and this book facilitates the necessary development of quality standards for these medicines.This book elucidates on various challenges and opportunities for quality evaluation of herbal drugs with several integrated approaches including metabolomics, chemoprofiling, marker analysis, stability testing, good practices for manufacturing, clinical aspects, Ethnopharmacology and Ethnomedicine inspired drug development. Written by Prof. Pulok K Mukherjee, a leader in this field; the book highlights on various methods, techniques and approaches for evaluating the purity, quality, safety and efficacy of herbal drugs. Particular attention is paid to methods that assess these drugs' activity, the compounds responsible and their underlying mechanisms of action. The book describes the quality control parameters followed in India and other countries, including Japan, China, Bangladesh, and other Asian countries, as well as the regulatory profiles of the European Union and North America. This book will be useful in bio-prospecting of natural products and traditional medicine-inspired drug discovery and development. - Provides new information on the research and development of natural remedies - essential reading on the study and use of natural resources for preventative or healing purposes - Brings together current thinking and practices in quality control and standardization of herbal drugs highlighting several integrated approaches for metabolomics, chemo-profiling and marker analysis - Aids in developing knowledge of various techniques including macroscopy, microscopy, HPTLC, HPLC, LC-MS/MS, GC-MS etc. with the development of integrated methods for evaluation of botanicals used in traditional medicine - Assessment of herbal drugs through bio-analytical techniques, bioassay guided isolation, enzyme inhibition, pharmacological, microbiological, antiviral assays and safety related quality issues - References global organizations, such as the WHO, USFDA, CDSCO, AYUSH, TCM and others to serve as a comprehensive document for enforcement agencies, NGOs and regulatory authorities

A collection of test procedures for assessing the identity, purity, and content of medicinal plant materials, including determination of pesticide residues, arsenic and heavy metals. Intended to assist national laboratories engaged in drug quality control, the manual responds to the growing use of medicinal plants, the special quality problems they pose, and the corresponding need for international guidance on reliable methods for quality control. Recommended procedures - whether involving visual inspection or the use of thin-layer chromatography for the qualitative determination of impurities - should also prove useful to the pharmaceutical industry and pharmacists working with these materials.

Drug Discovery and Evaluation has become a more and more difficult, expensive and time-consuming process. The effect of a new compound has to be detected by in vitro and in vivo methods of pharmacology. The activity spectrum and the potency compared to existing drugs have to be determined. As these processes can be divided up stepwise we have designed a book series "Drug Discovery and Evaluation" in the form of a recommendation document. The methods to detect drug targets are described in the first volume of this series "Pharmacological Assays" comprising classical methods as well as new technologies. Before going to man, the most suitable compound has to be selected by pharmacokinetic studies and experiments in toxicology. These preclinical methods are described in the second volume „Safety and Pharmacokinetic Assays". Only then are first studies in human beings allowed. Special rules are established for Phase I studies. Clinical pharmacokinetics are performed in parallel with human studies on tolerability and therapeutic effects. Special studies according to various populations and different therapeutic indications are necessary. These items are covered in the third volume: „Methods in Clinical Pharmacology".

Natural products are the most successful source of drugs. Of the 877 small-molecule new chemical entities introduced between 1981 and 2002, roughly half were natural products, semi-synthetic natural product analogues or natural mimics. Chinese herbs (traditional Chinese medicines, TCMs) have been used for prevention and treatment of diseases for thousands years. It has been attracting intensive attention in the trends of back to nature. As herbal medicines, the conditions of growth, harvest time, process and storage etc. will undoubtedly affect the presence and concentration of the bioactive constituents, thus affecting their quality and efficacy. Up to date, there are few books focussing on the relationship, which is the bridge between TCM and modern medical science, of traditional clinic uses, pharmacological activities and quality control of Chinese herbs. Unfortunately, bioactive compounds in Chinese herbs are usually not or only partially known. Actually, the active compounds considered in Chinese herbs may be different according to their clinical indication. In addition, it is considered that the curative effect of Chinese herbs is an integrative result of a number of bioactive compounds. Therefore, how to control the quality is a big problem. We would like to discuss the quality control based on their traditional clinical uses and pharmacological activities in this book, which is the fundamental step towards developing and modernising such products into evidence based medicines. It will also help the peoples to understand TCMs in modern scientific angles. This book is designed primarily as a textbook for or adjunct to course in herbal remedies, food safety or quality control of herbs. It is also a professional reference whom is in the area of drug discovery, pharmaceutical analysis and food chemistry.

"This book presents a structural approach to the evaluation of herbal medicinal products for quality, safety and efficacy. There has been an enormous growth in the market for herbal medicinal products in the last twenty five years. However the rediscovery of natural substances with therapeutic potential has raised questions of quality, safety and efficacy on the part of the consumer and also from health professionals. This book brings together current thinking and practice in these areas highlighting current research. In the light of increasing legislation to enforce better standards for these products and the demand by legislators and the public for assurance of safe and effective use, this book seeks to provide a state-of-the-art review, which informs and guides those who seek to promote their use. This book also gives an overview of the place of ethno pharmacology in the development of herbal medicinal products and discusses good agricultural and collection practices, marker analysis and stability testing which contribute to assessment of good quality of these materials." -- Publisher description.

This book introduces “network pharmacology” as an emerging frontier subject of systematic drug research in the era of artificial intelligence and big data. Network Pharmacology is an original subject of fusion system biology, bioinformatics, network science and other related disciplines. It emphasizes on starting from the overall perspective of the system level and biological networks, the analysis of the laws of molecular association between drugs and their treatment objects, reveals the systematic pharmacological mechanisms of drugs, and guides the research and development of new drugs and clinical diagnosis and treatment. After it was proposed, network pharmacology has been paid attention by researchers, and it has been rapidly developed and widely used. In order to systematically reveal the biological basis of diagnosis and treatment in traditional Chinese medicine and modern medicine, we proposed a new concept of "network target" for the first time, which has become the core theory of "network pharmacology". The core principle of a network target is to construct a biological network that can be used to decipher complex diseases. The network is then used as the therapeutic target, to which multicomponent remedies are applied. This book mainly includes four parts: 1) The concept and theory of network pharmacology; 2) Common analysis methods, databases and software in network pharmacological research; 3) Typical cases of traditional Chinese medicine modernization and modern drug research based on network pharmacology; 4) Network pharmacology practice process based on drugs and diseases.