TITLE	(Review paper)
AUTHOR	Studies on the production of some important secondary metabolites from medicinal plants by plant tissue cultures Mulabagal Vanisree1, Chen-Yue Lee2, Shu-Fung Lo2,3, Satish Manohar Nalawade1, Chien Yih Lin3, and Hsin-Sheng Tsay*,1
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ABSTRACT	Plants are a tremendous source for the discovery of new products of medicinal value for drug development. Today several distinct chemicals derived from plants are important drugs currently used in one or more countries in the world. Many of the drugs sold today are simple synthetic modifications or copies of the naturally obtained substances. The evolving commercial importance of secondary metabolites has in recent years resulted in a great interest in secondary metabolism, particularly in the possibility of altering the production of bioactive plant metabolites by means of tissue culture technology. Plant cell culture technologies were introduced at the end of the 1960's as a possible tool for both studying and producing plant secondary metabolites. Different strategies, using an in vitro system, have been extensively studied to improve the production of plant chemicals. The focus of the present review is the application of tissue culture technology for the production of some important plant pharmaceuticals. Also, we describe the results of in vitro cultures and production of some important secondary metabolites obtained in our laboratory.
KEYWORD	Biotransformations; Cell suspension cultures; Hairy root cultures; Pharmaceuticals; Secondary metabolites;
ARTICLE INFO	Botanical Bulletin of Academia Sinica, Volume 45 Number 1 January 2004, page 1-22, 22 pages
PUBLISHER	Institute of Plant and Microbial Biology, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan, Republic of China