Novel plant-derived anti-inflammatory drugs for treating Inflammatory bowel disease

Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is a lifelong disease without a cure, and its prevalence is expected to increase sharply. Therefore, there is an urgent need for new drugs. While novel drugs can be developed synthetically in the laboratories, plants have been a classical source of modern drugs that are used for treating many diseases. Indeed, tropical rainforest plants account for a quarter of these pharmaceutical products, with 80% of these discovered from plants used in herbal medicines. Queensland is rich in unique tropical rainforest plant species, several of which are used in Aboriginal bush medicines and have potential for drug development. We hypothesise that the selected Queensland tropical plants contain drug lead molecules in isolatable concentrations that will form the basis for developing novel drugs for treating IBD. We will include: i) an ethnobotanical approach - targeting plants used medicinally by the Iningai Aboriginal community in Central Queensland, and ii) an ecological approach - targeting plants potentially stressed by, and adapting to, climate change in the Wet Tropics World Heritage Area (WTWHA).
We will address three aims given below:
Aim 1: Discover novel anti-inflammatory drug lead molecules from plants selected using an ethnobotanical approach.
Aim 2: Preclinical evaluation of anti-inflammatory molecules isolated from a plant selected using an ecological approach.
Aim 3: Optimise the therapeutic properties of drug lead candidates identified by Aims 1 and 2.