Metabolomics — An innovative tool for standardization of crude extracts.
The variability of efficacy seen in herbal remedies is often due to lack of standardization. This is a major hurdle towards their acceptance by modern medicine. Environmental factors affect the plant constituents resulting in variability of efficacy. Due to the chemical complexity of the plant extract, standardisation becomes difficult. Hence pharmaceutical industries usually concentrate on identification of single active compound. However this approach is costly and, in most cases, unsuccessful as in traditional medicine the active principles are generally unknown with synergism often being a key factor in determining efficacy. Several approaches have been used towards standardizing plant extracts. Due to limitations of conventional methods, a systems biology approach — metabolomics has been gaining popularity.
Applications of metabolomics: Metabolomics is fast becoming the approach of choice across a broad range of sciences including systems biology, drug discovery, molecular and cell biology, and other medical and agricultural sciences. The metabolomes of medicinal plants are particularly a valuable natural resource for the evidence-based development of new phytotherapeutics and nutraceuticals
Features of metabolomics: Metabolomics is applied to link the biochemical components of plant extracts to their biological activity. Standardization using this approach is advantageous since it gives fingerprint of many plant compounds simultaneously and is not limited by the need to know which chemical components could have activity. It can help in developing method for identifying extracts with constant biological activity and chemical profile which are required for expression of good activity.
Use of metabolomics at FMR: The medicinal plant department at FMR has taken Psidium guajava L. (Guava) leave extracts with anti-diarrhoeal activity as an example, to demonstrate NMR based metabolomics as a prototype for standardisation of crude extract. Guava leaves from different locations have been collected in different seasons and their NMR profile acquired. Nine bioassays have been conducted and the results are being correlated with the NMR profile using different mathematical models.
This would help in modernisation of the traditional medicine and validate its use and further increase its popularity.
— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —
Foundation for Medical Research practices a combination of basic biomedical and translational research. Our traditional research areas are leprosy, tuberculosis and medicinal plants.
If you want to read more about what we do, then have a look at www.fmrindia.org
