Natural bioactive products as promising therapeutics: A review of natural product-based drug development

Since ancient times, natural medicines have had paramount importance in bolstering biotherapeutics to treat various diseases. The World Health Organization (WHO) revealed that more than 80% of the population of developing countries relies on traditional medicines, predominately herbal medicine, for their immediate medications. The drugs derived from medicinal plants have tremendous diversity with superfluous potency for managing communicable and non-communicable diseases, which diminishes the burden of modern pharmacopoeias in low and middle-developed countries. With the increasing importance and prevalence of herbal drugs, the appropriate evaluations are being implemented for their utilization. Most herbal medicines are prescribed by practical shreds of evidence and recommended in crude and semi-standardized forms. The inadequacy in pharmacological evaluation, preclinical and clinical examination of herbal drugs impedes their integration into contemporary medicinal practices. The preclinical investigation, prominently in-vivo and in-vitro studies, explores various attributes consisting of cell cytotoxicity, cell-cell interactions, intracellular activity, cell-environment interaction, gene expression studies, and metabolomics fingerprints of induced natural drugs. These pre-clinical evaluations and robust evidence consent to the safe and long-term utilization of herbal medicine to treat hideous diseases. Further, several modern practises are being considered for the precise and effective production of bioactive compounds at the commercial level. With this connection, this review illustrates the prominent sources of natural drugs, their pre-clinical assessments, the development of active drug molecules, and their commercialization in low-, middle-, and high-income countries.