Cox P A
Department of Botany & Range Science, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah 84602.
Ciba Found Symp. 1994;185:25-36; discussion 36-41.
For pharmaceuticals ranging from digitalis to vincristine the ethnobotanical approach to drug discovery has proven successful. The advent of high-throughput, mechanism-based in vitro bioassays coupled with candidate plants derived from pain-staking ethnopharmacological research has resulted in the discovery of new pharmaceuticals such as prostratin, a drug candidate for treatment of human immunodeficiency virus, as well as a variety of novel antiinflammatory compounds. Not all Western diseases are equally likely to be recognized by indigenous peoples. Gastrointestinal maladies, inflammation, skin infections and certain viral diseases are likely to be of high saliency to indigenous healers, whereas diseases such as cancer and cardiovascular illness are unlikely to be easily diagnosed by indigenous peoples. Yet indigenous remedies may indicate pharmacological activity for maladies such as schizophrenia, for which the biochemical mechanisms have yet to be discovered. Ethnopharmacological information can be used to provide three levels of resolution in the search for new drugs: (1) as a general indicator of non-specific bioactivity suitable for a panel of broad screens; (2) as an indicator of specific bioactivity suitable for particular high-resolution bioassays; (3) as an indicator of pharmacological activity for which mechanism-based bioassays have yet to be developed.
从洋地黄到长春新碱等各类药物，民族植物学方法在药物研发中已被证明是成功的。高通量、基于机制的体外生物测定法的出现，再加上从艰苦的民族药理学研究中筛选出的候选植物，促使了新药物的发现，如用于治疗人类免疫缺陷病毒的候选药物原他汀，以及多种新型抗炎化合物。并非所有西方疾病都同样容易被原住民识别。胃肠道疾病、炎症、皮肤感染和某些病毒性疾病很可能受到原住民治疗者的高度关注，而诸如癌症和心血管疾病等疾病则不太可能被原住民轻易诊断出来。然而，原住民的疗法可能显示出对精神分裂症等疾病的药理活性，而其生化机制尚未被发现。民族药理学信息可用于在新药研发中提供三个层面的解析：（1）作为适合一系列广泛筛选的非特异性生物活性的一般指标；（2）作为适合特定高分辨率生物测定的特异性生物活性指标；（3）作为尚未开发基于机制的生物测定的药理活性指标。
