| Summary: | It has been almost 20 years since the World Health Organization (WHO) established the International Regulatory Co-operation for Herbal Medicines (IRCH), as part of a WHO Traditional Medicine Strategy. Ensuring the efficacy, quality, and safety of herbal medicines is a key component of the strategy. The articles presented in this Special Issue address this component and represent a growing body of work in which a plethora of bioactive properties, of the therapeutic potential, of plants extracts have been identified. The obvious and consistent questions that arise from such studies are what are the contributions of the plants’ constituents to these properties and how significant is the therapeutic potential identified? The factors, which some might call challenges, that need to be considered in answering such a question effectively include the impact of different extraction techniques on the bioactive properties of plant extracts and developing and utilizing methods that simulate and model as closely as possible disease processes in humans. The aim of this Special Issue was to invite submissions that explored and addressed these factors as part of the process of gaining greater insights into how the bioactive properties of plant extracts (1) are conferred by their constituents and (2) can be exploited in developing new therapies for certain conditions.
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