Global Perspectives and Future Approaches

Abstract

Liquorice is a plant with a rich ethnobotanical history, and used throughout the world as a drug in traditional folk medicine. The vast range of biological effects such as anti-inflammatory, antiallergic, antioxidant, antiviral of the phytochemicals present in the extract has been of immense importance in phytotherapeutics. There is an immense need to modify the natural Glycyrrhiza constituents like glycyrrhizin to reduce these side effects, thereby generating the advanced versions of the bioactive compounds to be used as drugs in future medical applications (Sharma and Agrawal in Mintage J Pharm Med Sci 2:15–20, 2013). The screening for a particular activity can be achieved using automated high-throughput assay system to arrive to a “lead” molecule suitable for the development into a new drug (Eldridge et al. in Anal Chem 74:3963–3971, 2002). Glycyrrhizin, glycyrrhetinic acid, glabridin, and isoliquiritigenin hold a strong promise in designing future drugs. Derivatives of these compounds are being generated to evaluate their pharmacological purposes for future drug use. The advances in drug discovery with tools like the high-throughput system, proteomics, genomics, and informatics (Bio/chem. and pharmaco) have further enhanced the evaluation of these newly generated compounds for their future medical applications (Sharma and Agrawal in Mintage J Pharm Med Sci 2:15–20, 2013). Many studies demonstrate that liquorice has beneficial effects for treatment of severe diseases such as cancer, atherosclerosis, immunodeficiency, hormone deficiency, and viral, skin, and respiratory diseases. However, further studies are necessary to confirm these effects on the face (Asl and Hosseinzadeh in Licorice (Glycyrrhiza species). CRC Press, LLC, Taylor & Francis, USA, pp 935–958, 2012).