From Traditional Herbal Medicine to Rational Drug Discovery: Strategies, Challenges, and Future Perspectives

Plants are sources of many therapeutics used for the treatments of many complex diseases since ancient times. Plants can synthesize a plethora of natural compounds with diverse chemical structures. Despite many advances in the world, a large population of the world is still relying on the herbal system. Therefore, a holistic effort must be made for the conservation of herbal hot spots as well as also for the scientific documentation of active herbal ingredients present in a plant. A paradigm shift has taken from the herbal medicine system to modern approaches of drug design and therapy with the advancement of scientific research in the field of structural biology, genomics, proteomics, therapeutic biology, biochemistry, systems biology, and computer science. Rational approaches of drug development have made it possible to model the target, design various analogs, and dock them with the target, screen, analyze, and predict the pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic properties. Rational approaches have significantly reduced the cost, labor, and risk of failure in the process of drug discovery.