Antiviral Activity of Jamaican Medicinal Plants and Isolated Bioactive Compounds

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Abstract

Plants have had historical significance in medicine since the beginning of civilization. The oldest medical pharmacopeias of the African, Arabian, and Asian countries solely utilize plants and herbs to treat pain, oral diseases, skin diseases, microbial infections, multiple types of cancers, reproductive disorders among a myriad of other ailments. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that over 65% of the world population solely utilize botanical preparations as medicine. Due to the abundance of plants, plant-derived medicines are more readily accessible, affordable, convenient, and have safer side-effect profiles than synthetic drugs. Plant-based decoctions have been a significant part of Jamaican traditional folklore medicine. Jamaica is of particular interest because it has approximately 52% of the established medicinal plants that exist on earth. This makes the island particularly welcoming for rigorous scientific research on the medicinal value of plants and the development of phytomedicine thereof. Viral infections caused by the human immunodeficiency virus types 1 and 2 (HIV-1 and HIV-2), hepatitis virus B and C, influenza A virus, and the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS CoV-2) present a significant global burden. This is a review of some important Jamaican medicinal plants, with particular reference to their antiviral activity.

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Natural Products as Sources of New Drugs over the Nearly Four Decades from 01/1981 to 09/2019

David J Newman, Gordon M. Cragg (2020)

This review is an updated and expanded version of the five prior reviews that were published in this journal in 1997, 2003, 2007, 2012, and 2016. For all approved therapeutic agents, the time frame has been extended to cover the almost 39 years from the first of January 1981 to the 30th of September 2019 for all diseases worldwide and from ∼1946 (earliest so far identified) to the 30th of September 2019 for all approved antitumor drugs worldwide. As in earlier reviews, only the first approval of any drug is counted, irrespective of how many "biosimilars" or added approvals were subsequently identified. As in the 2012 and 2016 reviews, we have continued to utilize our secondary subdivision of a "natural product mimic", or "NM", to join the original primary divisions, and the designation "natural product botanical", or "NB", to cover those botanical "defined mixtures" now recognized as drug entities by the FDA (and similar organizations). From the data presented in this review, the utilization of natural products and/or synthetic variations using their novel structures, in order to discover and develop the final drug entity, is still alive and well. For example, in the area of cancer, over the time frame from 1946 to 1980, of the 75 small molecules, 40, or 53.3%, are N or ND. In the 1981 to date time frame the equivalent figures for the N* compounds of the 185 small molecules are 62, or 33.5%, though to these can be added the 58 S* and S*/NMs, bringing the figure to 64.9%. In other areas, the influence of natural product structures is quite marked with, as expected from prior information, the anti-infective area being dependent on natural products and their structures, though as can be seen in the review there are still disease areas (shown in Table 2) for which there are no drugs derived from natural products. Although combinatorial chemistry techniques have succeeded as methods of optimizing structures and have been used very successfully in the optimization of many recently approved agents, we are still able to identify only two de novo combinatorial compounds (one of which is a little speculative) approved as drugs in this 39-year time frame, though there is also one drug that was developed using the "fragment-binding methodology" and approved in 2012. We have also added a discussion of candidate drug entities currently in clinical trials as "warheads" and some very interesting preliminary reports on sources of novel antibiotics from Nature due to the absolute requirement for new agents to combat plasmid-borne resistance genes now in the general populace. We continue to draw the attention of readers to the recognition that a significant number of natural product drugs/leads are actually produced by microbes and/or microbial interactions with the "host from whence it was isolated"; thus we consider that this area of natural product research should be expanded significantly.

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Natural Products as Sources of New Drugs from 1981 to 2014.

David J Newman, Gordon M. Cragg (2016)

This contribution is a completely updated and expanded version of the four prior analogous reviews that were published in this journal in 1997, 2003, 2007, and 2012. In the case of all approved therapeutic agents, the time frame has been extended to cover the 34 years from January 1, 1981, to December 31, 2014, for all diseases worldwide, and from 1950 (earliest so far identified) to December 2014 for all approved antitumor drugs worldwide. As mentioned in the 2012 review, we have continued to utilize our secondary subdivision of a "natural product mimic", or "NM", to join the original primary divisions and the designation "natural product botanical", or "NB", to cover those botanical "defined mixtures" now recognized as drug entities by the U.S. FDA (and similar organizations). From the data presented in this review, the utilization of natural products and/or their novel structures, in order to discover and develop the final drug entity, is still alive and well. For example, in the area of cancer, over the time frame from around the 1940s to the end of 2014, of the 175 small molecules approved, 131, or 75%, are other than "S" (synthetic), with 85, or 49%, actually being either natural products or directly derived therefrom. In other areas, the influence of natural product structures is quite marked, with, as expected from prior information, the anti-infective area being dependent on natural products and their structures. We wish to draw the attention of readers to the rapidly evolving recognition that a significant number of natural product drugs/leads are actually produced by microbes and/or microbial interactions with the "host from whence it was isolated", and therefore it is considered that this area of natural product research should be expanded significantly.

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The growing use of herbal medicines: issues relating to adverse reactions and challenges in monitoring safety

Martins Ekor (2014)

The use of herbal medicinal products and supplements has increased tremendously over the past three decades with not less than 80% of people worldwide relying on them for some part of primary healthcare. Although therapies involving these agents have shown promising potential with the efficacy of a good number of herbal products clearly established, many of them remain untested and their use are either poorly monitored or not even monitored at all. The consequence of this is an inadequate knowledge of their mode of action, potential adverse reactions, contraindications, and interactions with existing orthodox pharmaceuticals and functional foods to promote both safe and rational use of these agents. Since safety continues to be a major issue with the use of herbal remedies, it becomes imperative, therefore, that relevant regulatory authorities put in place appropriate measures to protect public health by ensuring that all herbal medicines are safe and of suitable quality. This review discusses toxicity-related issues and major safety concerns arising from the use of herbal medicinal products and also highlights some important challenges associated with effective monitoring of their safety.

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Justin Jang Hann Chu: Role: Academic Editor

Journal

Journal ID (nlm-ta): Molecules

Journal ID (iso-abbrev): Molecules

Journal ID (publisher-id): molecules

Title: Molecules

Publisher: MDPI

ISSN (Electronic): 1420-3049

Publication date (Electronic): 25 January 2021

Publication date Collection: February 2021

Volume: 26

Issue: 3

Electronic Location Identifier: 607

Affiliations

[1 ]Biotech R & D Institute, University of the West Indies, Mona, 99999 Kingston, Jamaica; lowebiotech@ 123456gmail.com (H.L.); jbryant@ 123456ihv.umaryland.edu (J.B.)

[2 ]Vilotos Pharmaceuticals Inc., Baltimore, MD 21202, USA; ngeh.toyang@ 123456flavocure.com

[3 ]Flavocure Biotech Inc., Baltimore, MD 21202, USA

[4 ]Institute of Human Virology (IHV), University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD 21201, USA

[5 ]Physics Department, Florida Polytechnic Institute, Lakeland, FL 33805, USA; efouad@ 123456floridapoly.edu (E.F.); wngwa@ 123456bwh.harvard.edu (W.N.)

[6 ]Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Dana-Faber Cancer Institute, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02215, USA

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[* ]Correspondence: blairgsteele@ 123456gmail.com ; Tel.: +1-876-926-8502

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Ngeh Toyang https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9683-6192

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Publisher ID: molecules-26-00607

DOI: 10.3390/molecules26030607

PMC ID: 7865499

PubMed ID: 33503834

SO-VID: 144b7b6e-31d4-4ed1-99ce-9de6a906fd62

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Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

Antiviral Activity of Jamaican Medicinal Plants and Isolated Bioactive Compounds

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Most cited references 104

Natural Products as Sources of New Drugs over the Nearly Four Decades from 01/1981 to 09/2019

Natural Products as Sources of New Drugs from 1981 to 2014.

The growing use of herbal medicines: issues relating to adverse reactions and challenges in monitoring safety

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