Alice, Benzene, and Coffee: the ABC's of Ecopharmacognosy

It is 150 years since the most translated “children's” book, “Alice's Adventures in Wonderland” was first published, and also since Kekulé first day-dreamed about the possible structure of benzene as an ouroboros. Molecular architecture and rabbit holes ... what can be their connection to our contemporary challenges on this disappearing Earth? And what has coffee to do with all this? Our journey through time will take us to ancient worlds of natural medicine, through the age of molecular structure generation, on to molecular crafting, and finally to an interpretation of the ABC's of “ecopharmacognosy”, defined as the study of sustainable, biologically active, natural resources. Our focus will take a humanitarian perspective, based on the needs of the patient, the drinking of coffee, and the chemistry of Capsicum. We will be aided by the whimsical relevance of Alice's experiences to our contemporary situation. Finally, we will contemplate how the philosophy and sustainable practices of ecopharmacognosy may be applied to modulating our approaches to drug discovery, and to answering the question “what's in a name?”, a fundamental requirement for enhancing the quality, safety, efficacy, and consistency (QSEC) of dietary supplements through technology integration for the advancement of human health care systems [1 – 5].

References: [1] Cordell GA. (2012) In: Medicinal Plants: Diversity and Drugs. Rai M, Cordell GA, Martinez JL, Marinoff M, Rastrelli L. (Eds.). CRC Press, Boca Raton, FL, USA, 1 – 45. [2] Cordell GA. (2014) Phytochem. Lett. 10: 28 – 40. [3] Cordell GA. (2015) Phytochem. Lett. 11: 332 – 346. [4] Guo DA, Wu W-Y, Ye M, Liu X, Cordell GA. (2015) Science 347: S29-S31.

[5] Cordell GA (2015) In: Ethnopharmacology. Heinrich, M, Jäger, A.K. (Eds.) Wiley, Chichester, UK, 53 – 62.