Screening of herbal Drugs and Phytopharmaceuticals

Functional screening in traditional medicine

An enormous increase in the knowledge of herbal drug constituents, their effects, and side effects has occurred in recent years. As a result, many herbal products are undergoing a transition from classic herbal teas to standardized extracts. The advances made in medicinal plants research and phytotherapy offer new comprehensive information about the origins, constituents, and effects. .

There are many popular herbal drugs that are traditionally recognized as psychoactive and mood stabilizing. Although for many of these herbal drugs there is a growing amount of modern clinical data to substantiate their psychoactive properties, there exists very little evidence of the pharmacological mode of action of many of them. However, such studies are necessary in order to ensure their safer use as well as to identify their full potential as therapeutic psychoactive drugs. Furthermore, screening such phytopharmaceuticals provides an opportunity for identifying new lead substances as well as studying the pharmacological basis of reputed synergistic mode of action of herbal drugs. Their complex chemical nature makes herbal drugs difficult to study using conventional in vitro pharmacological models, such as patch clamp or synaptosome uptake studies.

The NeuroProof technology provides more relevant physiological information, as well as possible indications and dosages of herbal drugs and phytopharmaceuticals. The multiparametric description of the activity pattern changes caused by treatment of a brain-region-specific neuronal network is a sophisticated approach to quantify the complex effects of neuroactive agents, of unknown compounds, and of complex mixtures such as biological extracts. Thus the NeuroProof data provide novel, global insights into the possible pharmacological mechanisms of modes of action of herbal drugs.

More information is available here.