A floral romance: how plants could help treat diabetes

Jacqui Curtis

6 October 2006: From traditional Chinese remedies to the latest new-age natural treatments - plant derived medicines have long offered natural, alternative ways to treat a variety of common ailments - and provided lead compounds for drug design and development.

David Lin, senior lecturer in medicinal chemistry and pharmacology, revealed in a recent seminar Romancing with medicinal plants: Search for Anti-inflammatory & Anti-diabetic Agents that medicinal plants including the Australian Ficus (Ficus racemosa) and popular green tea (Camellia sinensis ) may help to fight against inflammatory diseases including diabetes.

Dr Lin's work has found plant compounds with the potential to treat diabetes Photo: Kimberly Douglas

"Plants have been used as medicines from the earliest times," Dr Lin said. "More than seven thousand medicinal compounds in western pharmaceuticals are derived from plants, and the template for many conventional drugs comes from plants."

With emerging evidence showing that diabetes is an inflammatory disease, Dr Lin's study examined a number of plants with traditionally used to treat inflammation and diabetes from Australia, Hawaii and China. The aim was to select plants with more likely to isolate active constituents that had anti-inflammatory and anti-diabetic qualities, which could be useful in formulating new treatments for diabetes and other inflammatory conditions.

"The aim of our study is to find anti-inflammatory compounds that may be used for discovery and design of anti-diabetic drugs from the plants systematically-selected from traditional medicines cross several cultures," he said.

"Treating diabetes from an anti-inflammatory perspective offers a new approach for this chronic disease.

"Racemosic acid in the Ficus plant has been identified as a new compound that inhibits a number of chemical and protein mediators in inflammation, but it is a long way to develop it into a therapeutic drug," Dr Lin said.

Dr Lin continues to work on racemosic acid with Dr David Leach and Dr Stephen Myers from Southern Cross University and Dr Rachel Li from the Canberra Hospital.