Abstracto

Development of new anti-diabetic drug from medicinal plant-genomic research

Prasanta Chakraborty

Diabetes mellitus is considered as one of the five leading causes of death in the world. The global prevalence of diabetes was 3-4% in 2000, and expected to increase to 4.5-5.5% by 2030, and WHO has predicted that the major burden will go to developing countries. Nearly 60-80% of the world’s population uses traditional medicines derived from medicinal plants for various diseases including diabetes. Since time immemorial traditional plants have played a very crucial role in treatment, prevention, mitigation and cure of the different diseases. There are huge numbers of plants that are having anti-diabetic properties. Some plants like O sanctum possess antidiabetic, anti-cancer, anti-fertility, analgesic properties. Many pre-clinical studies have been documented that shows anti-diabetic and hypoglycemic effects of O sanctum through various postulated mechanisms. A huge number of medicinal plants with potential antidiabetic activity have been listed which may include: Azadirachta indica its leaves, stem bark and seeds possess hypoglycemic activity via increasing insulin secretion from pancreatic beta-cells similarly, Grewia asiatica has antioxidant and radical scavenging activity. But in spite of having huge number of medicinal plants worldwide, there are not many biologically active antidiabetic molecules/drugs in our hand. There should be some general mechanism of searching among hundreds of active ingredients like important classes of terpenoids, alkaloids, flavonoids and phenolic compounds as plant metabolic products presents in herbs.