Abstract:

The concept of "pharmacophylogeny" was proposed by Peigen Xiao in the 1980s based on long-term studies of Chinese researchers since ancient times and especially the 1950s. The complicated relationships and connectivity between kinship of medicinal plants, their chemical profiles and therapeutic utilities are consistent goals of pharmacophylogeny studies, which benefit innovative drug R&D. In the present work, we reviewed the origin and a brief history of research in this field, as well as the status quo and recent progress of pharmacophylogeny. The concept "pharmacophylogenomics" is put forward to represent the expanding utility of pharmacophylogeny in botanical drug R&D. Pharmacophylogeny and pharmacophylogenomics are the synthesis of multiple disciplines, such as chemotaxonomy, plant morphology, plant biochemistry/molecular biology and omics, etc. Medicinal plants within the same phylogenetic groups may have the same or similar therapeutic compounds/effects, thus forming the core of pharmacophylogeny, which is the scientific law summed up from practice and applied to practice after refining and sublimation. In the past, pharmacophylogeny plays a big role in looking for alternative resources of imported drugs in China. At present, it continues to play an active role in expanding medicinal plant resources, quality control/identification of herbal medicines, as well as predicting the chemical constituents or active ingredients of herbal medicine and the identification and determination of chemical constituents. In the ongoing future, it will play a bigger role in the search for new drugs, sorting out, summarizing, and improving herbal medicine experiences, thus boosting the sustainable conservation and utilization of traditional/natural?medicinal resources.

Key words: Pharmacophylogeny, Pharmaceutical resource discovery, Traditional medicinal plants, Pharmacophylogenomics