Perspectives and challenges of tropical medicinal herbs and modern drug discovery in the current scenario

ABSTRACT

Tropical diseases such as malaria, tuberculosis, trypanosomiasis, and leishmaniasis, account for a large number of deaths annually. Herbs are an excellent source of tropical medicines. Many advancements and discoveries have taken place in the field of drug discovery but still, a major population of tropical diseases relies on herbal traditional medicine. There are some challenges related to policy implementation, efficacy, resistance and toxicity of tropical medicines. There are many tropical diseases such as such as schistosomiasis, leishmaniasis, African sleeping sickness, filariasis and chagas disease which are neglected because very few pharmaceutical companies have shown their interest in developing therapeutics against these diseases of poor people. There are many benefits associated with herbal medicine such as the cost of production, patient tolerance, large scale availability, efficacy, safety, potency, recyclability, and environment friendly. A large number of natural extracts such as curcumin, artemisinin, morphine, reserpine, and hypericin, are in use for treatment of different tropical diseases for a long time. The current review is to discuss the overview of tropical medicinal herbs, its scope and limitations in the modern drug discovery process.