208-219Drug
development in phytomedicine has been focused in the past on the discovery and
analysis of new structures from natural products. The search aimed at the
determination of the single “active principle” in plants, based on the assumption
that a plant has one or a few ingredients which determine its therapeutic
effects. But traditional systems of medicines like Ayurveda, traditional
Chinese medicine or the European phytotherapy generally assume that a synergy
of all ingredients of the plants will bring about the maximum of therapeutic
efficacy. This approach has for long been impossible to investigate since
adequate methods to standardize complex plant mixtures as well as to
rationalize complex mode of actions were lacking. The introduction of high
throughput technologies provides the opportunity to determine profiles of
plants and to systematically explore the mode of action of combinatory drug
regimes. The present review highlights the concept of synergy and gives
examples of synergistic effects of plant constituents. It elaborates on how the
high throughput technologies can be used in drug development from natural
products with the aim of creating evidence-based plant medications in
prevention and treatment of different diseases in the form of new single
treatments or new combinatory drug regimes while exploiting synergy-effects.</b