Pharmaceutica Analytica Acta

Abstracto

Difficulties of Drug Development from Thai Herbal Medicine

Tanawan Kummalue

Traditional medicine has long been widely used in many countries around the world. In Thailand, over 700 species of medicinal plants have been prescribed by Thai traditional doctors whereas few scientific data on the pharmacological properties have been reported so far. For example, four Thai medicinal plants that have been investigated by our research group were Ficus hispida L., Sapindus rarax DC., Erycibe elliptilimba M.&C., and Pouzolzia indica L. with a view to be further developed as anticancer agents. Moreover, three Thai herbal remedies composed of several kinds of plants were also evaluated in this concept. Many difficulties have been found while performing the medicinal plant research for drug development. All the processes such as collection of raw plant material, identification of medicinal plant, and extraction techniques used for investigation and clinical trial, etc, have lots of pitfalls, and hindrances. In this article, common difficulties experienced during the processes of our Thai medicinal plant research for drug development were described in detail.