The basal chemical structure of many low molecular weight molecules, which have been registered as drugs within the last 10-15 years is of plant origin. This clearly underlines the importance of plant derived secondary metabolites for human health and the necessity to identify and characterize novel chemical structures. Research on natural compounds relevant for human health for another reason is of considerable importance due to the immediate relevance for application. In Africa for example, a considerable part of the population depends on traditional remedies, e.g. from traditional medicinal plants, which often represent the only affordable source of medicinal care. Over the years, the issues related to the use of traditional medicinal, which in traditional use is often represented by an aequous or an ethanolic plant extracts, have not changed. In the foreground are questions related to the efficacy and safety of the products used. For example, extracts from (medicinal) plants represent mixtures of compounds and are, pharmacologically spoken, harder to deal with than single compounds. Another challenge is represented by the identification and characterization of those chemicals of the extracts, which are responsible for the desired/observed biological function. In summary, despite a considerable knowledge gain within the past years, there is still the need to continuously standardize and improve procedures to finally obtain a well characterized plant derived medicinal product.

These questions of standardization and in depth characterization of plant derived products, which are intended to be marketed as medicinal products or as dietary supplement have been discussed in previous Alumni Workshops. Thereby, specific fields of application (e.g. menopausal complaints), defined molecular targets (e,.g. nuclear receptors) or the relevance of the use of innovative technologies (e.g. “Omics” technologies) has been covered. Todays research on medicinal plants is predominantly conducted in the fast developing countries in Asia and in some countries in Africa and America.

Future research needs and standardization

A major aim in ethnopharmacological research of medicinal plants is to preserve and to pass on the traditionally and experimentally acquired knowledge on individual plants by high quality publications, derived by adherence to highly standardized procedures. This holds for the entire width of the ethnopharmacological research field, starting with the collection of traditional knowledge in field studies up to pharmacological, pharmacokinetic and toxicological studies or even clinical trials. For a long time the practise within this chain of knowledge gain was little or not at all standardized. Scientific approaches in field studies for example were extremely variable and heterogenously performed (Heinrich et al., 2018). Pharmacological studies with extract represent another example for the need of standardization, as extracts represent a complex mixture of compounds, which may interact in experimental assays. Since these facts were not sufficiently taken into consideration, a lot of experimental designs used  for ethnopharmacological research were criticized (Heinrich et al., 2020a).

To develop comparable standards for ethnopharmacological research, working groups were established, which aimed to establish guide lines for „Good Practices“ for field work  (Heinrich et al., 2018) and „Best Practices“ in phytopharmacological research (Heinrich et al., 2020a). It is remarkable that for the establishment of the latter guide line seven „Editors-in-Chief“ of the most important journals in the field collaborated and that their guideline was immediately adopted by the British Journal of Pharmacology (Izzo et al., 2020).

In summary,  based on the above considerations the topic of „Good/Best Practice“ in phytopharmaceutical research was chosen as a new the core aspect of the workshop. We aim to a) make a crucial contribution in the harmonization of experimental practice in the field of ethnopharmacology, b) to increase the probability that participants get their research work published in high impact journals if adhering to these standardized practices. In addition, to these newly acquired aspects, thematic continuity to previous workshops is of utmost concern.

References

Heinrich, M., Lardos, A., Leonti, M., Weckerle, C., Willcox, M., with the ConSEFS advisory group, Based on a consultative process of researchers active in ethnopharmacology and with particular input by the ConSEFS Advisory group:, Applequist, W., Ladio, A., Lin Long, C., et al. (2018). Best practice in research: Consensus Statement on Ethnopharmacological Field Studies - ConSEFS. J. Ethnopharmacol. 211, 329–339.

Heinrich, M., Appendino, G., Efferth, T., Fürst, R., Izzo, A.A., Kayser, O., Pezzuto, J.M., and Viljoen, A. (2020a). Best practice in research - Overcoming common challenges in phytopharmacological research. J. Ethnopharmacol. 246, 112230.

Heinrich, M., Scotti, F., Andrade-Cetto, A., Berger-Gonzalez, M., Echeverría, J., Friso, F., Garcia-Cardona, F., Hesketh, A., Hitziger, M., Maake, C., et al. (2020b). Access and Benefit Sharing Under the Nagoya Protocol—Quo Vadis? Six Latin American Case Studies Assessing Opportunities and Risk. Front. Pharmacol. 11.

Izzo, A.A., Teixeira, M., Alexander, S.P.H., Cirino, G., Docherty, J.R., George, C.H., Insel, P.A., Ji, Y., Kendall, D.A., Panattieri, R.A., et al. (2020). A practical guide for transparent reporting of research on natural products in the British Journal of Pharmacology: Reproducibility of natural product research. Br. J. Pharmacol. 177, 2169–2178.

From the above stated considerations were used to delineate the aims of the workshop.

• Continuity:
  In continuity of previous workshops the first aim of this workshop is to discuss within the  group recent developments of importance within the scientific field of natural compound research. This comprises own novel findings by the participants on efficacy, safety and molecular mode of action of selected compounds.
  It will not be possible to have this discussion for the entire field of natural compound research. In the tradition of previous Alumni workshops, preferentially but not exclusively research on the 48 human nuclear receptors will serve as an example. Receptors of this family for example are involved in regulation of male and female reprodution and lipid metabolism. In addition, the importance of these receptors is also discussed in connection to the effective treatment and prevention of age related diseases and conditions like menopausal complaints, diabetes mellitus, hypertension, adipositas and cancer.
• Good/best practices1:
  In the classical view, the path for the identification of a medicinal plant to a (pre-)clinical product involves authentication and standardization of the plant derived starting material, the standardization of extract production and the isolation of single compounds, the chemical and biological standardization, as well as the pharmacological and toxicological evaluation. As elaborated above, there is a need for standardization of all these experimental steps mentioned above.  In this regard it is the second aim of the workshop is to introduce the guide lines for „good“ and „best practices“ to the participants in plenary lectures.
• Good/best practices2:
  The knowledge gained will then be used to discuss a potential implementation of „good/best practices” into individual research activities of the participants. By this individual approach we aim to contribute to the harmonization in the scientific practice in the areas of ethnopharmacological research or of natural compound research, thereby increasing the probability to get research work published in high ranked peer-reviewed journals.
• Dissemination:
  A key question of previous workshops was how to best disseminate results achieved from ethnobotanical, ethnopharmacological, phytochemical, cell biological, molecular and physiological studies into the general public. The need of innovative ideas for dissemination is continuously high. The forth aim of the workshop is therefore to search for new/alternative ways of dissemination for the gained knowledge from experimental research.

A major challenge still is how knowledge obtained from research on traditional medicinal products can be communicated back to the traditional healer or the user of traditional medicinal products. However, this is important to make a contribution towards the legal requirements which result from the convention on biodiversity and the consecutive international agreements particularly the Nagoya protocol. In addition, the issue of protection of users of the traditional products from potential side effects needs to be tackled (Heinrich et al., 2020b).  in the end, it also needs to be discussed, whether and how participants, particularly from third world countries, can serve as mediators of communication in their country of origin.

Reference
Heinrich, M., Scotti, F., Andrade-Cetto, A., Berger-Gonzalez, M., Echeverría, J., Friso, F., Garcia-Cardona, F., Hesketh, A., Hitziger, M., Maake, C., et al. (2020b). Access and Benefit Sharing Under the Nagoya Protocol—Quo Vadis? Six Latin American Case Studies Assessing Opportunities and Risk. Front. Pharmacol. 11.