Medicinal Chemistry and Drug Design

Pharmacognosy

Pharmacognosy is defined as the study of plants or other natural sources as a possible source of drugs. pharmacognosy is also considered as "the study of the biochemical, physical, chemical, and biological properties of drugs, drug substances or potential drugs or drug substances of natural origin as the design for brand spanking new drugs from natural sources". In other terms the word pharmacognosy is simply understand as the “knowledge of drugs”. it is also considered as the " study of natural product molecules such as secondary metabolites which are useful for their ecological, medicinal, gustatory, or other functional properties." Other definitions are more about, drawing on a broad spectrum of biological subjects, which includes botany, ethnobotany, marine biology, microbiology, herbal medicine, chemistry, biotechnology, phytochemistry, pharmacology, pharmaceutics, clinical pharmacy and pharmacy practice. Pharmacognosy is used by pharmaceutical companies to screen, describe and produce new drugs for the treatment of human disease. Often, naturally occurring drugs cannot be mass-produced, so they must be studied in order to develop synthetic biosimilars.