Abstract
Herbal medicines are used in many countries for maintaining health and treating diseases. Their efficacy depends on the use of the correct materials, and life-threatening poisoning may occur if toxic adulterants or substitutes are administered instead. Identification of a medicinal material at the DNA level provides an objective and powerful tool for quality control. Extraction of high-quality DNA is the first crucial step in DNA authentication, followed by a battery of DNA techniques including whole genome fingerprinting, DNA sequencing and DNA microarray to establish the identity of the material. New or improved technologies have been developed and valuable data have been collected and compiled for DNA authentication. Some of these technologies and data are patentable. This article provides an overview of some recent patents that cover the extraction of DNA from medicinal materials, the amplification of DNA using improved reaction conditions, the generation of DNA sequences and fingerprints, and the development of high-throughput authentication methods. It also briefly explains why these patents have been granted.
Highlights
Herbal medicines are used in many countries; unlike chemical drugs, herbal preparations often consist of a combination of materials
Aristolochic acid nephropathy has been reported in Hong Kong [3], Korea [4], and Belgium [5] as a result of herbs contaminated with aristolochic acids
Many countries and regions have set up quality standard tests for imported herbal medicine
Summary
Herbal medicines are used in many countries; unlike chemical drugs, herbal preparations often consist of a combination of materials. For the protection of intellectual properties and opportunities for commercialization, patents have been applied for the extraction of DNA from medicinal material, amplification of DNA from difficult templates, generation of species-specific fingerprints and sequences, and high-throughput detection and identification of unknown DNA. US Patent 7214484 was issued for a lysis buffer that does not require a high concentration of chelators, allowing proteinase K to effectively digest the protein molecules in a sample and resulting in an increase in the efficiency of cell lysis [29] This method is more effective in extracting DNA from animal than herbal material, as the former has higher protein content than the latter. US Patent 7297490 was issued for a novel DNA microarray that provides a high-throughput approach for authenticating Chinese medicinal materials by making use of the variable ribosomal RNA sequences for generating the array [53]. The application may sometimes be abandoned [54,55,56,57,58], if it is found to have little commercial interest
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