Perspectives for Globalized Natural Medicines

Natural medicines provide valuable resources to meet the requirements for global health care at affordable prices. Therefore, safety and efficacy need to be proven in a comparable manner to conventional drugs. Evidence-based natural and western medicine may merge to a “one-world medicine” for the sake of all patients in industrialized and developing countries. In the present review, we discuss strategies for (1) preservation of traditional knowledge on natural medicines, (2) sustainability of medicinal herbs and natural products, and (3) standardization and quality control. Novel technologies will impact research on natural medicines in the years to come, e.g. remote sensing to map medicinal plant locations, DNA barcoding for plant authentication, hollow fiber extraction, high-end techniques for chemo-profiling of plant constituents in medicinal products and blood serum of patients as well as systems biological approaches.