Considerations to be taken when carrying out medicinal plant research : what we learn from an insight into the IC50 values, bioavailability and clinical efficacy of exemplary anti-inflammatory herbal components

  • Medicinal plants represent a big reservoir for discovering new drugs against all kinds of diseases including inflammation. In spite the large number of promising anti-inflammatory plant extracts and isolated components, research on medicinal plants proves to be very difficult. Based on that background this review aims to provide a summarized insight into the hitherto known pharmacologically active concentrations, bioavailability, and clinical efficacy of boswellic acids, curcumin, quercetin and resveratrol. These examples have in common that the achieved plasma concentrations were found to be often far below the determined IC50 values in vitro. On the other hand demonstrated therapeutic effects suggest a necessity of rethinking our pharmacokinetic understanding. In this light this review discusses the value of plasma levels as pharmacokinetic surrogates in comparison to the more informative value of tissue concentrations. Furthermore the need for new methodological approaches is addressed like the application of combinatorial approaches for identifying and pharmacokinetic investigations of active multi-components. Also the physiological relevance of exemplary in vitro assays and absorption studies in cell-line based models is discussed. All these topics should be ideally considered to avoid inaccurate predictions for the efficacy of herbal components in vivo and to unlock the “black box” of herbal mixtures.

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Author:Mona Abdel TawabORCiDGND
URN:urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-621151
DOI:https://doi.org/10.3390/ph14050437
ISSN:1424-8247
Parent Title (English):Pharmaceuticals
Publisher:MDPI
Place of publication:Basel
Document Type:Article
Language:English
Date of Publication (online):2021/05/06
Date of first Publication:2021/05/06
Publishing Institution:Universitätsbibliothek Johann Christian Senckenberg
Release Date:2021/08/18
Tag:bioavailability; boswellic acids; combinatorial approaches; curcumin; medicinal plant; metabolomics; quercetin; resveratrol; tissue distribution; tissue-plasma-ratio
Volume:14
Issue:5, art. 437
Page Number:34
First Page:1
Last Page:34
HeBIS-PPN:486698629
Institutes:Biochemie, Chemie und Pharmazie
Dewey Decimal Classification:5 Naturwissenschaften und Mathematik / 58 Pflanzen (Botanik) / 580 Pflanzen (Botanik)
6 Technik, Medizin, angewandte Wissenschaften / 61 Medizin und Gesundheit / 610 Medizin und Gesundheit
Sammlungen:Universitätspublikationen
Licence (German):License LogoCreative Commons - Namensnennung 4.0