Ethnopharmacology and future drug development: the North American experience.

The major programs in North America designed to study plants as sources of potential drugs in which ethnomedical information is used to some extent are reviewed. Most of this work is carried out in academic laboratories in the United States; funded primarily from governmental agencies. A few major pharmaceutical companies in the United States are involved in drug development, using plants as sources of starting material, as well as many small start-up firms. These will be identified in the text with their major thrust, where known. Additionally, the NAPRALERT database on natural products will be described with the goal of illustrating how it may be used in the drug development process. Attenders at the Congress were given an opportunity to query the database on-line from Uppsala to Chicago.