Therapeutic Potential of Natural Pharmacological Agents in the Treatment of Human Diseases

The importance of natural products produced by living organisms from the nature for health and disease treatment has been immense throughout the human evolution. Several natural products derived from plants for thousands of years have been traditionally used to treat various types of human illnesses including general injuries, wound healing, and pain. Natural products have been shown to possess significant pharmacological activities that regulate various vital cell signaling pathways that cause mitogenic, cytotoxic, and genotoxic reactions leading to various disease pathologies. Modern synthetic and combinatorial chemistry associated with the new technological tools such as genomics, proteomics, and metabolomics paved wider use of natural products. Nowadays, most of the natural products are processed and developed as potential pharmacological agents with effective antioxidative, antimitotic, anti-infective, anti-inflammatory, antiangiogenic, and anticarcinogenic properties. In fact, some natural products have been employed as lead compounds to obtain highly biologically relevant semisynthetic pharmacological derivatives with increased efficiency and efficacy for the therapeutic use. The prosperity of knowledge we are assembling from the past several decades will significantly inspire us to develop these natural products as novel potential drugs for future therapeutic strategies.