Exploration of Ethnomedicinal Plants for Drug Discovery in High-Throughput Omics Era

Plants have been utilized for their medicinal properties across cultures for millennia, forming the basis of traditional remedies. Recent years have witnessed a surge in interest toward alternative therapies, particularly those sourced from natural products, notably plants, esteemed for their rich repository of biologically active compounds. Phytochemical screening, a vital process in drug discovery, has been instrumental in identifying novel bioactive molecules within medicinal plants, subsequently subjected to rigorous pharmacological evaluation, resulting in the discovery of new drugs and expanded therapeutic applications. Despite the escalating global demand for herbal medicines, large-scale production of medicinal plants and their derivatives remains constrained. The advent of modern technology has sparked multi-omics research in medicinal plants, yielding pivotal insights into the genes, metabolites, and enzymes governing the biosynthesis and regulation of active compounds. This interdisciplinary approach spans genomics for species variation and evolution, transcriptomics, proteomics, and metabolomics for dynamic molecular profiling, alongside the exploration of natural resources for drug discovery. These multi-omics endeavors provide a comprehensive understanding of medicinal plant adaptation to diverse environments, shedding light on the chemical diversity and composition of bioactive compounds. However, many phytochemical constituents and their potential health benefits remain untapped. Given the vast diversity and global distribution of medicinal plants, coupled with the influence of growth duration and environmental factors on bioactive compounds, leveraging multi-omics technologies is imperative for addressing fundamental and applied research gaps. Such an approach is pivotal for advancing the development of novel medicinal plant resources and the discovery of therapeutically promising compounds.