Harnessing the Prospect of Anti-diabetic Medicinal Plants from the Cholistan Desert of Pakistan

Medicinal plants are widely used against diabetes throughout the world but few of them have been validated by scientific criteria. Great diversity of animal models are being introduced to better understand the pathogenesis and new drug effects on diabetes. Diabetes mellitus is growing at an alarming rate. Attention has been focussed on previously unexplored medicinal plants (such as Boerhavia procumbens, Corchorus depressus, and Farsetia hamiltonii) extracts from the Choilstan Desert region of Bahawalpur in a standard and systematic way. These medicinal plants are traditionally used to cure devastating diabetes mellitus. The crude extracts have been subjected to a screening study to detect potential anti-diabetic activity.

Our experimental strategy involves collection of medicinal plants from the Cholistan Desert of Bahawalpur, followed by chemical fingerprinting (bioassay-guided extraction, fractionation, purification and structural characterization of lead compounds through modern spectroscopic techniques) and biological fingerprinting (DNA-target analysis, HSA binding, or liposome-binding chromatography). Finally, the presentation also encompasses toxicological studies, followed by pre-clinical trials to cure diabetes in alloxan-induced diabetic rats.