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Home > Research and Activities > Laboratory of Medicinal Plant Screening

Laboratory of Medicinal Plant Screening

1. Members

Project leader YOSHIMATSU Kayo
Sub-project leader FUCHINO Hiroyuki
Researcher KAWANO Noriaki, MATSUO Hirotaka
Technical staff KAWAKAMI Hitomi

2. Background and objectives

The field of drug discovery has recently undergone some major changes with the introduction of new techniques such as genomic drug discovery. Accordingly, many methods that utilize natural products for drug development have become obsolete. However, in modern drug discovery techniques such as high-throughput screening, naturally occurring compounds, especially those of plant origin, are still highly applicable, as plants have the ability to biosynthesize compounds with unique chemical structures. For this reason, natural products remain important.

In this Project, we are constructing a large-scale extract library based on plant resources in Japan and abroad, for use in screening for various biological activities in the context of drug discovery.

3. Overview of our research

Recently, the methodologies for drug discovery have undergone remarkable changes. However, low-molecular weight synthetic compounds have been regarded as the foundation of modern drug discovery techniques, such as combinatorial chemistry and high-throughput screening (HTS). These molecules remind us of the importance of naturally occurring compounds, especially those of plant origin. Several large chemical libraries have been established domestically; by contrast, crude extract libraries have been limited to those containing materials of microorganism or marine origin. In particular, the creation of a plant origin extract library is difficult due to the highly specialized nature of plant identification. The Research Center for Medicinal Plant Resources in NIBIOHN has three experimental stations in Japan, allowing the collection of plant resources over a wide domestic area. The Medicinal Plant Screening Project hopes to facilitate drug discovery using a plant extract library as a tool for the evaluation of a wide range of biological activities, under collaboration agreements with many research institutes.

In this project, we are aggressively collecting plant materials in Japan to enhance our plant extract library. More than 15,000 varieties of plant extracts are available for biological screening. This extract library also contains about 1,000 crude drugs used in Kampo medicine prescriptions. Also, to add to the fundamental information regarding this library, acquisition of endotoxin tests for each sample are currently underway. Information regarding "the borderline of pharmaceuticals to non-pharmaceuticals in Japan" and "the food history of the world", as these topics relate to the botanical origins of the materials in the plant extract library, will be appended to address inquiries and interests arising from health food companies. In addition, this project will develop an effective methodology for identification of bioactive principles from multicomponent plant extracts using LC/MS analysis. To date, active anti-HCV compounds and components of fern active against knee osteoarthritis have been identified from this plant extract library.

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Laboratory of Medicinal Plant Screening

E-mail yoshimat*nibiohn.go.jp (replace * by @)

Research and Activities

  • List

    NIBIO

    National Institute of Biomedical Innovation
    Coordination Office of Research Ethics
    Department of Research Support
    Center for Intractable Diseases and ImmunoGenomics (CiDIG)
    Laboratory of ImmunoGenomics
    Laboratory of Precision Immunology
    Platform of Therapeutics for Intractable Disease
    Laboratory of Rare Disease Information and Resource Library
    Reverse Translational Research (RTR) Project
    KAGAMI Project
    Microbial Research Center for Health and Medicine
    Laboratory of Vaccine Materials
    Laboratory of Infectious Medical Information
    Laboratory of Infectious Diseases and Immunity
    Laboratory of Cell Vaccine
    Laboratory of Gut Environmental System
    Laboratory of Gut Microbiome for Health
    Center for Drug Design Research
    Laboratory of Proteomics for Drug Discovery
    Laboratory of Antibody Design
    Laboratory of XNA Screening and Design
    Laboratory of Drug Discovery Imaging
    Laboratory of Nuclear Transport Dynamics
    Laboratory of Advanced Biopharmaceuticals
    Laboratory of Clinical and Analytical Chemistry
    Laboratory of Biofunctional Melecular Medicine
    Artificial Intelligence Center for Health and Biomedical Research
    Laboratory of Bioinformatics
    Laboratory of In Silico Design
    Laboratory of Toxicogenomics Informatics
    AI Nutrition Project
    Center for Drug Discovery Resources Research
    Laboratory of Drug Discovery Resources Research
    Laboratory of Cell Model for Drug Discovery
    Laboratory of Functional Organoid for Drug Discovery
    Laboratory of Drug Discovery Resources Research Collaboration Promotion Office
    Laboratory Animal Resource Bank (LARB)
    Research Center for Medicinal Plant Resources
    Tsukuba Primate Research Center
    Section of Laboratory Equipment
    Section of Laboratory Animals

    NIHN

    National Institute of Health and Nutrition
    Department of Nutritional Epidemiology and Shokuiku
    Section of the National Health and Nutrition Survey
    Section of Nutritional Epidemiology
    Section of Dietary Guidelines
    Department of Physical Activity Research
    Section of Behavioral Physiology
    Section of Exercise Guideline
    Section of Healthy Longevity Researches
    Department of Clinical Nutrition
    Section of Nutritional Therapy
    Department of Nutrition and Metabolism
    Section of Energy Metabolism
    Section of Chrononutrition
    Department of Food Function and Labeling
    Section of Food Component Analysis
    Section of Food Safety and Function
    Section of Information Network of Health Food
    International Center for Nutrition and Information
    Section of International Nutrition Strategy
    Section of Population Health Metrics
    Section of Global Disaster Nutrition
    Section of Research Collaboration and Partnership
    AI Nutrition Research team

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