Pharmacognosy implies multidisciplinary studies to identify new drug candidates (pure compounds or extracts) or new leads from natural origin and control their quality.
Our laboratory chose to focus on plants used in traditional medicine to:
- Evaluate the activities of crude extracts from traditional medicinal plants and obtain data to support their traditional uses, their indications and analyse potential toxicities.
- Isolate and identify bioactive compounds which could constitute new prototypes for drug development
- Analyse the possible targets and identify structure-activity relationships
- Control their quality to limit adulterations and standardise treatments.
- Analyse bioavailability of natural extracts/compounds
To allow these researches, we developed an expertise in extraction, purification, structure determination of compounds from complex matrices and development of quantification validated methods, while most of the pharmacological experiments are realised in collaboration with teams having expertise in the selected biological activities.
Our future researches will mainly focus on antiparasitic and antimicrobial activities for which a majority of available drugs are natural substances or derivatives, as well as antidiabetic and anti-inflammatory drugs.