Pharmaceutical resource discovery from traditional medicinal plants:Pharmacophylogeny and pharmacophylogenomics

The worldwide botanical and medicinal culture diversity are astonishing and constitute a Pierian spring for innovative drug R&D.Here,the latest awareness and the perspectives of pharmacophylogeny and pharmacophylogenomics,as well as their expanding utility in botanical drug R&D,are systematically summarized and highlighted.Chemotaxonomy is based on the fact that closely related plants contain the same or similar chemical profiles.Correspondingly,it is better to combine morphological characters,DNA markers and chemical markers in the inference of medicinal plant phylogeny.Medicinal plants within the same phylogenetic groups may have the same or similar therapeutic effects,thus forming the core of pharmacophylogeny.Here we systematically review and comment on the versatile applications of pharmacophylogeny in(1)looking for domestic resources of imported drugs,(2)expanding medicinal plant resources,(3)quality control,identification and expansion of herbal medicines,(4)predicting the chemical constituents or active ingredients of herbal medicine and assisting in the identification and determination of chemical constituents,(5)the search for new drugs sorting out,and(6)summarizing and improving herbal medicine experiences,etc.Such studies should be enhanced within the context of deeper investigations of molecular biology and genomics of traditional medicinal plants,phytometabolites and metabolomics,and ethnomedicine-based pharmacological activity,thus enabling the sustainable conservation and utilization of traditional medicinal resources.

Plant pharmacophylogeny:past,present and future

The concept of“pharmacophylogeny”was proposed by Peigen Xiao in the 1980s based on long-term studies of Chinese researchers since ancient times and especially the 1950s.The complicated relationships and connectivity between kinship of medicinal plants,their chemical profiles and therapeutic utilities are consistent goals of pharmacophylogeny studies,which benefit innovative drug R&D.In the present work,we reviewed the origin and a brief history of research in this field,as well as the status quo and recent progress of pharmacophylogeny.The concept“pharmacophylogenomics”is put forward to represent the expanding utility of pharmacophylogeny in botanical drug R&D.Pharmacophylogeny and pharmacophylogenomics are the synthesis of multiple disciplines,such as chemotaxonomy,plant morphology,plant biochemistry/molecular biology and omics,etc.Medicinal plants within the same phylogenetic groups may have the same or similar therapeutic compounds/effects,thus forming the core of pharmacophylogeny,which is the scientific law summed up from practice and applied to practice after refining and sublimation.In the past,pharmacophylogeny plays a big role in looking for alternative resources of imported drugs in China.At present,it continues to play an active role in expanding medicinal plant resources,quality control/identification of herbal medicines,as well as predicting the chemical constituents or active ingredients of herbal medicine and the identification and determination of chemical constituents.In the ongoing future,it will play a bigger role in the search for new drugs,sorting out,summarizing,and improving herbal medicine experiences,thus boosting the sustainable conservation and utilization of traditional/natural medicinal resources.