BOTANY AND PHARMACOGNOSY
Academic year and teacher
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- Versione italiana
- Academic year
- 2016/2017
- Teacher
- ALESSANDRA GUERRINI
- Credits
- 9
- Didactic period
- Secondo Semestre
- SSD
- BIO/15
Training objectives
- Knowledges: concept of superior and inferior plant organism. Plant anatomy, histology and cytology as tools to acquire knowledge and understanding of the Plant Kingdom and as source to inspire new pharmaceutically important bio-molecules. Medicinal plants, crude drugs and related active chemicals of current pharmaceutical importance. Main factors affecting the pharmaceutical uses of plant sources and crude drugs, and of the main protocols to assess the quality control.
Skills: capacity to recognize the main groups of plant and crude drugs of pharmaceutical importance, to analyze in a critical way the plant-crude drug production chain. Capacity to qualify the pharmaceutical use of plants or crude drugs through the identification and characterization of the biological matter and active compounds. Capacity to upgrade the knowledge on the natural sources of crude drugs and active molecules for pharmaceutical uses Prerequisites
- Basic knowledge of the main primary metabolites and the most important cellular constituents
Course programme
- The course involves 64 hours of frontal lectures and 12 hours of laboratory practice for a total amount of 76 hours.
The lectures will cover the following topics:
- Plant morphogenesis. Autotrophic and eterotrophic organisms. Cytology: prokaryotic and eukaryotic cell. Main structures of the plant cell (vacuole, plastids, cell wall) and their biological and pharmaceutical role. Plant cell as laboratory for production of pharmaceutical compounds: biological (primary and secondary metabolism) and pharmaceutical aspects (10 hours). Histology: meristematic tissues, adult or definitive tissues. Anatomy and histology of roots, stems (primary and secondary structure) and leaves. Anatomy of leaves, flowers, fruits, seeds. Pharmaceutical importance of plant tissues for recognizing plants and crude drugs, and for production and storing active compounds. Introduction to reproduction. Pharmaceutical importance of histology and anatomy for recognizing plants and drugs and for the production and accumulation of the active ingredients (10 hours).
- Plant Systematics. Fundamentals of plant systematics. Main families of food, medicinal and poisonous plants, (4 hours).
- Relationships between plants and environment. The interactions between plants, environment and other living things. Factors affecting the quality and quantity of active ingredients. Wild and cultivated medicinal plants. Good practices for cultivation and harvesting. Import and export of medicinal plants and drugs, the production chain (notes) (10 hours).
- The herbal drugs. Concept of medicinal plant, used part and drugs. Factors affecting the quality of the drugs. Drug pharmacognostic control, storage and contamination, drug preparation, extraction of plant derivatives and active ingredients. Good manufacturing practices. Drug quality control and quantification. Assays for botanical and phytochemical control provided in the European Pharmacopoeia. Herbal supplements and laws (14 hours).
- Monographs of medicinal plants. The secondary plant metabolism as a source of pharmaceutical compounds and hemi-synthesis derivatives: the main chemical classes of active ingredientes. Examples of monographs of drugs that are characterized by the content of health-related metabolites: carbohydrate and fat based-drugs, glycoside based-drugs, terpene based-drugs, alkaloid based-drugs, proteolytic enzyme based-drugs. Efficacy and safety (8 hours). Didactic methods
- The didactic methods are mainly based on frontal lectures, as an irreplaceable tool for the synthesis and the development of training objectives: relies on the contribution of projected slides, schemes that facilitate the study shown on the board to guide the training and the adoption of texts devoted to deepening the concepts. The lectures are set to an interactive dialogue student-teacher. Some laboratory experiments will promote learning of the theoretical notions, through assays of macroscopic and microscopic drug recognition, provided in Pharmacopoeia.
Learning assessment procedures
- The aim of the exam is to verify at which level the learning objectives previously described have been acquired, through an oral examination consisting of broad and specific questions.
After submission of test reports for laboratory practices, to pass the exam students must acquire a minimum overall mark of 18/30, obtained by the sum of the answers on questions of two main teaching blocks:
1) plant morphogenesis and plant systematic, whose minimum mark is 8/30 and maximum 14/30, 2) monographs on medicinal plants, plant drugs and the relationship between plants and environment whose minimum mark is 10/30 and maximum 16/30. If the overall mark is less than 18/30, the student must repeat the learning assessment.
It also gives the student an optional learning assessment procedure. A single written ongoing test on teaching blocks of plant morphogenesis and plant systematic can be chosen and if the student reaches the minimum mark 8/30 (up to a maximum 14/30) is admitted to the oral test on the didactic block of monographs on medicinal plants, plant drugs and relationships between plants and environment. The ongoing test evaluation will remain valid for one academic year. Reference texts
- Bruni A. - Biologia Farmaceutica (Biologia vegetale, botanica farmaceutica, fitochimica) - Pearson, Italia, 2014.
Pancaldi S., Baldisserotto C., Ferroni L., Pantaleoni L.- Fondamenti di botanica generale- Teoria e Pratica. McGraw Hill, 2011.
Capasso F. - Farmacognosia. Botanica, chimica e farmacologia delle piante medicinali. II edizione. Spinger, 2011
