Artificial intelligence as a new potent tool to develop botanical active ingredients

Experimental validation of the biological activity of sandalwood extract on selected aspects.

Experiments were conducted on cultured cells, skin biopsies and reconstructed tissues in order to effectively validate and confirm the predictions obtained in-silico. Experimental results confirmed that santalwood™ biofunctional was capable to modulate in-vitro the expression of specific olfactory receptors in skin models and could mitigate the effect of various stresses in parallel with the modulation of molecular signs of senescence in-vitro.

conclusion

In conclusion, network pharmacology is evolving as a systematic paradigm and becoming a frontier research field of active ingredient discovery and development. The ability to predict the biological activity in-silico prior to any laboratory experiment corresponds to a virtual screening of the potential activity and leads to a gain in efficacy and allows to save time and resources. The predictions can be used to orient the strategy of the experimental validation in-vitro, after the selection of the topics of interest, that is according to the positioning of the botanical extract in development. The remaining pool of available in-silico predictions will allow a later repositioning. It is highly probable that the use of network pharmacology to assist the development of botanical active ingredients will develop in parallel with the development of data in the domains of human health and physiology.

bibliographic references
Hopkins, A. L. (2007). Network pharmacology. Nat. Biotechnol. 25, 1110–1111. doi: 10.1038/nbt1007-1110