"SUSTAINABLE DRUGS AND GLOBAL HEALTH CARE "

Geoffrey A. Cordell
Natural Products Inc.
Evanston, IL 60203, U.S.A.

    Each day, Earth’s finite resources are being depleted for energy, for material goods, for transportation, for housing, and for drugs. As we evolve scientifically and technologically, and as the population of the world rapidly approaches 7 billion and beyond, among the many issues with which we are faced is where the drugs for future global health care will come from. Globally, medicinal agents are primarily derived from two sources, synthetic and natural. For the developed world, efforts have been initiated to make drug production “greener”, with milder reagents, shorter reaction times, and more efficient processing, thereby using less energy, being more atom efficient, and generating fewer by-products.
    However, most of the world’s population uses plants, in either crude or extract form, for their primary health care. There is relatively little discussion as yet, about the long term effects of the current harvesting methods for medicinal plants from the wild, which is depleting these critical resources without initiatives to commercialize their cultivation.
    To meet future health care needs, a paradigm shift is required in order to adopt new approaches using contemporary technology which will result in drugs being regarded as a sustainable commodity, irrespective of their source. In this presentation, several approaches to enhancing and sustaining the availability of drugs, both synthetic and natural, will be discussed, including the use of vegetables as chemical reagents, and intergated strategies involving information systems, biotechnology, nanotechnology, and detection techniques for the development of medicinal plants with enhanced levels of bioactive agents.

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