The future of plant drug discovery

To have a future in the pharmaceutical industry, plant drug discovery must compete with combinatorial chemistry and high-throughput pharmacologic screening (HTPS). Plant functional genomics coupled with HTPS may achieve this; thus, functional biology can identify 'libraries' of candidate plant species from which individuals can be prioritized by 'differential HTPS'. The full genomic potential of a species for bioactivity can be accessed by cellular mutagenesis and elicitation, with HTPS identifying clones with novel activity. The comparison of 'positive' clonal phenotypes with their almost identical 'negatives' facilitates the identification of active compounds and 'genomic' products. The logical conclusion is to use combinatorial genomics together with HTPS to direct plant cellular 'evolution' continuously towards metabolites with specific pharmacologic activity. Mankind would then become the orchestrator of plant secondary metabolism, rather than its passive beneficiary.