Harnessing the Phytochemical, Pharmacological and Anti-Microbial Potentials of Andrographis Alata (Vahl) Nees

BACKGROUND: Nature has been a soul source of therapeutic pharmaceutics for a long time and a notable number of advanced pharmaceutics have been invented from this source. Numerous drug leads were identified with the contribution of combinatorial and other allied field experts in the traditional medicine field. The World Health Organization (WHO) characterizes complementary medication as the “wide range of heath practice approaches for prevention, diagnosis and treatment”. However, there is an urgent necessity to validate the obtained information by employing various advanced techniques and tools before it has applied for drug discovery or as effective therapeutics in the clinic along with existing therapies. AIM: Hence, vigorous investigations on herbal plants are required to assess their pharmacological properties and efficacy. India is one of the richest emporia of herbal plants and termed as ‘Botanical Garden’ of the world because of its long history in the traditional knowledge on herbal plants and significant contribution and application in the modern medical practice. Ethno pharmacological evidence measured as an effective tool in the novel discovery of novel drug leads from herbal plants and is a pre-requisite for the practice of plant derived active secondary metabolites. The members of the Acanthaceae family have therapeutic importance owing to the existence of many active secondary bioactive principles or novel phytoconstituents. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The present study embarked into Andrographis alata (AA), one of the less explored but well prescribed traditional plants and validated its medicinal properties using various techniques. RESULTS: Since, other species of Andrographis, possessed ample alkaloids and diterpenoids which exhibited varied therapeutic properties which include pharmacological and antimicrobial activities, this AA less investigated multiple aspects including its phyto-screening. CONCLUSION: The phytochemicals obtained from AA with its multifaceted activities may serve the ideal therapeutic as well as an analogue for many combinatorial drugs. This study also justified the traditional values in the complementary system and therapeutic values. However, further investigations on its various bioactive principles and their mechanism of action are highly warranted.