Traditional medicine patents lead to enhanced drug discovery from natural products

Hippocrates, the father of modern medicine, noted that powder derived from the bark of a willow tree helped to relieve pain and headaches, and in the 1800s, chemists isolated the beneficial substance as salicylic acid and refined it by buffering sodium salicylate with acetyl chloride to create acetylsalicylic acid, or aspirin.

Nowadays, natural products are ripe for potential drug discovery and the life sciences sector is rich with traditional medicine patents. A growing reservoir of traditional medicine content is available, along with efficient and productive search methods for exploring it. John Zabilski explains.