Using Old Solutions to New Problems - Natural Drug Discovery in the 21st Century

Edited by Marianna Kulka, ISBN 978-953-51-1158-0, 424 pages, Publisher: InTech, Chapters published June 19, 2013 under CC BY 3.0 license

DOI: 10.5772/46069

The medicinal use of plants, animals and microorganisms has been a part of human evolution and likely began before recorded history. Is it possible that this knowledge can be used to create powerful new drugs and solve some of the human health problems facing us today? This book is a collection of an expert team of agronomists, chemists, biologists and policy makers who discuss some of the processes involved in developing a naturally-sourced bioactive compound into a drug therapy. These experts define a natural compound and elucidate the processes required to find, extract and define a naturally-derived bioactive molecule. Finally, they describe the necessity for understanding the fundamental mechanisms of disease before applying bioactive molecules in bioassay-guided drug discovery platforms.

Chapter 1 Discovery, Development, and Regulation of Natural Productsby Juergen Krause and Gailene Tobin

Chapter 2 Genetic, Agronomy, and Metabolomics of Prince Edwards Island Wild Rose Collection and Promise for Cultivar Developmentby Bourlaye Fofana, Kaushik Ghose, Bob Chapman and Kevin Sanderson

Chapter 3 Magnetic Resonance Technologies: Molecules to Medicineby Nadine Merkley, Ian Burton, Tobias Karakach and Raymond T. Syvitski

Chapter 4 Marine Natural Products for Protein Misfolding Modulationby James C. Giffin and Kathryn Vanya Ewart

Chapter 5 Marine Flatfish-Derived Bioactive Peptides: From the Ocean to the Bedsideby Susan Douglas

Chapter 6 Anticancer Properties of Phytochemicals Present in Medicinal Plants of North Americaby Wasundara Fernando and H. P. Vasantha Rupasinghe

Chapter 7 A New Perspective on the Development of Cholesterol- Lowering Productsby Sandhya V.G. Nair and Yanwen Wang

Chapter 8 A Glance at the Complexity of Nutrition and the Prostate: Considering Molecular Targets to Unravel the Most Recent Controversy Between Omega-3 Fatty Acids and Their Impact on Prostate Cancer Riskby Gailene Tobin, Robert Hurta and Marianna Kulka

Chapter 9 Mechanisms and Treatment of Photoaging and Photodamageby Marianna Kulka

Chapter 10 Asthma in the 21st Century — Unexpected Applications of Ancient Treatmentsby Priyanka Pundir, Xiaofeng Wang and Marianna Kulka

Chapter 11 Plant Based Natural Products and Breast Cancer: Considering Multi-Faceted Disease Aspects, Past Successes, and Promising Future Interventionsby Gailene Tobin, Ruwani Kalupahana and Marianna Kulka

Link:

http://www.intechopen.com/books/using-old-solutions-to-new-problems-natural-drug-discovery-in-the-21st-century