Glossary of Phytochemicals

The skyrocketing cost of research for therapeutic molecules from purely synthetic chemistry, has prompted the resurgence of interest in traditional herbal medicine. While clinical usage of such herbs has been extensively documented in ancient texts, exhaustive plant profiles are lacking for most plants, especially with regard to phytochemicals and their biosynthetic pathways. This shortage of information, coupled with increasing information demands of modern validation procedures of manufacturers of herbal medicinal products and the demand of increasingly well-informed regulatory authorities worldwide, is putting increasing pressure on scientists and technologists to come up with such information. In addition, researchers involved with ethnobotanical bioprospecting, from the pharmaceutical industry and academic research institutes are also on the lookout for such information.

Towards that end, this book has been compiled to contribute to such a knowledgebase where concise and practical information has been provided on about 1,300 phytochemicals from 850 medicinal plants, most of them being of Indian origin. The unique feature of this book is that to keep it manageable, the coverage has been restricted to those phytochemicals that show promise as a future therapeutic molecule, based on extensive experience of the editor as MD alternative medicine. Information provided on each phytochemical includes generic name, chemical class, molecular weight and formula, melting point, boiling point, physical form, solubility, CAS number, biological source, biological action and chemical structure with stereochemistry.