Natural products and medicinal herbs, including those used in traditional medicine, are becoming increasingly popular and important in Western countries. In China and other countries, traditional medicine has long used medicinal herbs to treat or relieve the symptoms of many human diseases, including cardiovascular diseases. Moreover, the active ingredients of natural products and medicinal herbs are among the most crucial resources for developing new pharmacological compounds and foundation for treating human diseases. Therefore, research on natural products and medicinal herbs is a crucial area for developing new drugs for treating human diseases. Specifically, there is a large potential for the use of natural products or medicinal herbs to create novel antiplatelet drugs.
Blood platelets are known to play important role in hemostatic processes, wound healing, inflammation, angiogenesis, and atherosclerosis. The main physiological functions of platelets are to prevent blood loss and maintain vascular integrity. However, under pathological conditions such as inflammatory diseases or diabetes, platelets are prone to uncontrolled activation and aggregation, eventually enhancing the progression of atherosclerosis and leading to heart attack or ischemic stroke. In clinical environments, antiplatelet drugs have been widely used as antithrombotic therapy in the prevention of coronary and cerebrovascular events associated with atherothrombosis. These antiplatelet drugs target multiple pathways that contribute to platelet activation and reduce the risk of atherothrombotic complications. However, the existing drugs are compromised by unwanted and sometimes life-threatening bleeding, which have limited their usage and dosage. These lines of evidence indicate that it is crucial to develop a novel antiplatelet drug with strong antithrombotic activity and low bleeding side effect.
In this Research Topic, we welcome the submission of Original Research, Review and Mini-Review articles that cover different aspects of the role of platelet activation in atherothrombotic events, such as myocardial infarction and ischemic stroke. We specifically encourage studies that cover, but are not limited to, to the following topics:
1. Isolation, identification, and characterization of medicinal herbs or natural drugs with experimental and clinical implications for treating cardiovascular diseases;
2. Identification and execution of safe and effective natural medicines for the treatment of thrombosis and vascular diseases;
3. Elucidation of function, drug interaction, and side effects of medicinal herbs or natural drugs in cardiovascular diseases using systematic approaches such as transcriptomics, and proteomics;
4. Advances in screening and identifying natural drugs against cardiovascular diseases;
5. Current investigations of novel drug development for treatment of myocardial infarction and stroke.
Keywords: medicinal herbs, natural products, platelet, thrombosis, cardiovascular
Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.
