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Reverse ethnopharmacology and drug discovery

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dc.affiliation.dptoUC3M. Departamento de Estadísticaes
dc.contributor.authorLeonti, Marco
dc.contributor.authorStafford, Gary I.
dc.contributor.authorDal Cero, Maja
dc.contributor.authorCabras, Stefano
dc.contributor.authorCastellanos, María Eugenia
dc.contributor.authorCasu, Laura
dc.contributor.authorWeckerle, Caroline S.
dc.contributor.funderMinisterio de Economía y Competitividad (España)es
dc.contributor.funderEuropean Commissionen
dc.date.accessioned2021-07-08T10:14:37Z
dc.date.available2021-07-08T10:14:37Z
dc.date.issued2017-02-23
dc.description.abstractETHNOPHARMACOLOGICAL RELEVANCE: Ethnopharmacological investigations of traditional medicines have made significant contributions to plant-derived drugs, as well as the advancement of pharmacology. Drug discovery from medicinal flora is more complex than generally acknowledged because plants are applied for different therapeutic indications within and across cultures. Therefore we propose the concept of “reverse ethnopharmacology” and compare biomedical uses of plant taxa with their ethnomedicinal and popular uses and test the effect of these on the probability of finding biomedical and specifically anticancer drugs. MATERIALS AND METHODS: For this analysis we use data on taxonomy and medical indications of plant derived biomedical drugs, clinical trial, and preclinical trial drug candidates published by Zhu et al. (2011) and compare their therapeutic indications with their ethnomedicinal and popular uses as reported in the NAPRALERT® database. Specifically, we test for increase or decrease of the probability of finding anticancer drugs based on ethnomedicinal and popular reports with Bayesian logistic regression analyses. RESULTS: Anticancer therapy resulted as the most frequent biomedicinal indication of the therapeutics derived from the 225 drug producing higher plant taxa and showed an association with ethnomedicinal and popular uses in women's medicine, which was also the most important popular use-category. Popular remedies for dysmenorrhoea, and uses as emmenagogues, abortifacients and contraceptives showed a positive effect on the probability of finding anticancer drugs. Another positive effect on the probability of discovering anticancer therapeutics was estimated for popular herbal drugs associated with the therapy of viral and bacterial infections, while the highest effect was found for popular remedies used to treat cancer symptoms. However, this latter effect seems to be influenced by the feedback loop and divulgence of biomedical knowledge on the popular level. CONCLUSION: We introduce the concept of reverse ethnopharmacology and show that it is possible to estimate the probability of finding biomedical drugs based on ethnomedicinal uses. The detected associations confirm the classical ethnopharmacological approach where a popular remedy for disease category X results in a biomedical drug for disease category X but does also point out the existence of cross-over relationships where popular remedies for disease category X result in biomedical therapeutics for disease category Y (Zhu et al., 2011).en
dc.description.sponsorshipThis paper is based on an oral presentation held at the 16th ISE Congress in Yulin, China (May 16-18th, 2016) and we would like to thank the organizers for the excellent congress and their hospitality. We are thankful also to Rich Spjut for the valuable comments on a draft version of this paper. GIS was a recipient of The Swiss Government Excellence Postdoctoral Scholarship awarded by the Federal Commission for Scholarships for Foreign Students (FCS). ML and CW acknowledge funding from the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no. 606895. SC gratefully acknowledges funding from the RYC-2012-11455 and ECO2015-66593-P. MEC and SC acknowledge funding of the MINECO-Spain project (MTM2013-42323-P and MTM2016-77501-P).en
dc.format.extent15
dc.identifier.bibliographicCitationLeonti, M., Stafford, G. I., Cero, M. D., Cabras, S., Castellanos, M. E., Casu, L. & Weckerle, C. S. (2017). Reverse ethnopharmacology and drug discovery. Journal of Ethnopharmacology, vol. 198, pp. 417–431.en
dc.identifier.doihttps://doi.org/10.1016/j.jep.2016.12.044
dc.identifier.issn0378-8741
dc.identifier.publicationfirstpage417
dc.identifier.publicationlastpage431
dc.identifier.publicationtitleJournal of Ethnopharmacologyen
dc.identifier.publicationvolume198
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/10016/33021
dc.identifier.uxxiAR/0000019672
dc.language.isoeng
dc.publisherElsevieren
dc.relation.projectIDGobierno de España. RYC-2012-11455es
dc.relation.projectIDGobierno de España. ECO2015-66593-Pes
dc.relation.projectIDGobierno de España. MTM2013-42323-Pes
dc.relation.projectIDGobierno de España. MTM2016-77501-Pes
dc.relation.projectIDinfo:eu-repo/grantAgreement/EC/FP7/606895/MedPlant
dc.rights© 2017 Elsevier Ireland Ltd.en
dc.rightsAtribución-NoComercial-SinDerivadas 3.0 España*
dc.rights.accessRightsopen accessen
dc.rights.urihttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/es/*
dc.subject.ecienciaBiología y Biomedicinaes
dc.subject.ecienciaBotánicaes
dc.subject.ecienciaEstadísticaes
dc.subject.ecienciaFarmaciaes
dc.subject.ecienciaInformáticaes
dc.subject.ecienciaMatemáticases
dc.subject.otherBiodiversityen
dc.subject.otherBioprospectingen
dc.subject.otherTraditional medicineen
dc.subject.otherDrug discoveryen
dc.subject.otherAnticanceren
dc.subject.otherWomen's medicineen
dc.titleReverse ethnopharmacology and drug discoveryen
dc.typeresearch article*
dc.type.hasVersionAM*
dspace.entity.typePublication
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