Biogenic drug
Biogenic drugs are active ingredients ( drugs ) that are used medicinally and come from plants , fungi , bacteria or from animal and human components. With drug groups such as antibiotics , cholesterol lowering agents (eg. As statins ), cytotoxic drugs (eg. As Taxol ) or analgesics (eg. As morphine ) play them in all important therapeutic areas a central role.
The science that deals with biogenic drugs within pharmacy is pharmaceutical biology , previously also pharmacognosy .
origin
The use of medicinal plants is historically and currently significant . The respective active ingredients are mostly secondary metabolites that occur in low concentrations, so that the extraction is often time-consuming. The development of methods for chemical synthesis may make it easier and cheaper to obtain it. A well-known example is acetylsalicylic acid (aspirin), which was previously obtained from willow bark .
As antibiotics producers, fungi and bacteria are very important suppliers of biogenic drugs, but they were also the first suppliers of cholesterol-lowering drugs (statins).
Biogenic drugs can also be obtained from animals (e.g. insulin from pancreas ) and humans (e.g. clotting factors from blood). Such human and animal medicinal substances are usually proteins . These are now increasingly being produced in white biotechnology with genetically modified bacteria or fungi. This relatively new method of providing biogenic drugs expands the possibilities of medical therapies .
literature
- M. Melzig, E. Teuschner and U. Lindequist: Biogenic medicines: A textbook of pharmaceutical biology , 6th edition, July 2004, 846 pages, ISBN 3-8047-2073-0
