Natural Bioactive Products from an Ornamental- Medicinal Flower (Catharanthus roseus (L.) G. Don) forms Promising Therapeutics: A Critical Review of Natural Product-Based Drug Development

Catharanthus roseus (L.) G. Don (Apocynaceae) commonly called as “flower of immortality”, “the flower of death”, “violet of the sorcerers” and “an emblem of friendship”. It is a well-known weed to employed for treating various disorders. The study aims at far-reaching review on phytochemistry, pharmacological activities, ethnopharmacology, characterization, chemical composition, and biological applications of C. roseus plants which aids to provide scientific evidence for the ethnobotanical claims and to identify gaps required to be conducted as a future research requirement. Most of the traditional and systematic uses obtained from the extraction of C. roseus plants were validated by the scientific studies such as antimicrobial activity, anticancer activity, antidiabetic activity, antileukemia activity, antioxidant activity, chemotherapeutic drugs and therapy, wound healing, production of nanoparticles and nanoproducts, etc. Isolated compounds, mainly terpenoid indole alkaloids (TIA) such as ajmalicine, anhydrovinblastine, catharanthine, serpentine, vindoline, vinblastine, vincristine, and vindolinine were confirmed and showed potent activity. This review article explores the phytochemistry, ethnopharmacological, pharmacological and biological activities of C. roseus plants which gives the evidence of a potent and commercial drug which up on further research leads to the most viable drug for variety of treatments.