Week 2

We read four articles this week and had to answer three questions. For this week I decided to answer the questions all together, not individually, because they are so closely linked. I hope that the answers seem equally complete and have a better flow. 
Here is a list of the articles: 

Cox_1994_Ethnobotanical approach to drug discovery

Fabricant and Farnsworth_2001_Value of plants used in trad med for drug discovery

Harvey_2004_Medicines from nature_are natural products still relveant to drug discovery

Medical Ethnobotany_442_Fall 2011

Andrade-Cetto and Heinrich_2011_From the field into the lab

And the questions: 

What is the ethnobotanical approach to drug discovery?

What are its contributions and challenges?

How has it changed over the last decades?

 

The ethnobotanical approach to drug discovery is essentially the discovery of drugs based off of information that is acquired from field studies. A researcher or research team analyzes plants in a unique culture using techniques talked about during week one. After this information about traditional plant use has been gained, the ethnobotanist collects samples of the researched plants and sends them to a lab. In some cases these plants are screened for new medicinal chemicals. In other studies scientists simply go off of leads and assumptions of what medicinal value plant chemicals may have. These methods have proved very useful and have contributed a lot to pharmaceutical research. About 25% of all prescription drugs in the U.S. and Canada contain chemicals either from or modeled after plant products. (Cox, 25) There are challenges that come with this style of research. Both ethics and time tend to put a damper on field study research. It can be a complicated but important task to conduct ethnobotanical research respectfully in regards to the culture being researched and the country in which it is taking place. An ethnographical research project can take quite a bit of time. A lot goes in to establishing good rapport with a new culture and becoming close enough with informants for them to reveal their knowledge of plants. After that is done, lots more time is spent collecting the right plants, getting them to the lab and having them evaluated. Over the past few decades everything is becoming digital. Faster and easier ways of discovering drugs are being developed but they are becoming expensive themselves. Never the less these new methods of molecular screening are taking over more and more. The approach of random screening currently dominates drug discoveries. (Harvey, 197) Various systems of assays, robotics and databases make it simpler than ever before (Harvey, 197). With the influx of new technology we are jumping to conclusions that synthetically creating medicine is the best way. However, there still lies plenty of value in more traditional ethnobotanical approaches. Only 6% of the world's plant species have been screened for biological activity and only 15% have been evaluated phytochemically. (Fabricant and Fansworth, 69) This shows that there is stil plenty of potential for major breakthroughs in drug discovery through plants. It is important for ethnobotanists to continue to find the most ethical and practical ways to go about research and continue to learn about the way in which plants are used for medicine. There could be many cures hiding in the wild.