Knowledge for Development

A natural product library from African medicinal plants to help drug discovery

Author:

Date: 17/12/2013

Introduction:

Fidele Ntie-Kang at the Department of Chemistry, University of Buea, Cameroon, and colleagues have explored a dataset, named AfroDB, of molecular compounds from African medicinal plants to assess their bioactivity and ‘drug-likeness’ (the similarity to known medicinal drugs). This study involved the virtual screening of the three dimensional structure of the compounds to calculate their physico-chemical properties. In addition, a series of descriptors have been used to predict the pharmacokinetic profile of these natural products (NPs). The availability of such structures and calculated properties within AfroDb will facilitate the drug discovery process from leads identified from African medicinal plants. This newly developed database could serve as a centralised and open continent-wide repository of natural products from African flora.   

(PLoS ONE, 30/10/2013)  

http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0078085

More from the same research team: ‘Cameroonian medicinal plants: a bioactivity versus ethnobotanical survey and chemotaxonomic classification’.  

https://www.biomedcentral.com/1472-6882/13/147  

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