In this book the authors have set out to capture the latest advances and approaches to using and engineering plants, and in some cases fungi, for multiple bioactivity based end uses: human degenerative disease, palliative treatments, bacterial and fungal pathogenicity, etc. This book is timely since the total synthesis route to therapeutic reagents is increasingly failing to deliver with the drug companies renewing their interest in natural solutions. The chapters are packed with detail and well referenced, leaving the reader fully versed on each specific topic.

Interestingly the book does not, unlike other similar publications, focus on cancers and cardiovascular disease but puts a significant effort into new solutions to combat bacterial and fungal pathogens and these reports encompass both standard natural product chemistry and protein/peptide based approaches to therapeutics. The book also has an excellently laid out short chapter on the use of natural products in drug discovery research that, despites its position mid-book, actually sets the scene for the following chapters.

The only real negative factor in the book is the chapter on antioxidant activity in herbs that propagates the assumption that such activity is the source of biological activity, although in the majority of cases this is yet to be proven. This aside the book is an excellent reference text for post graduate scientists working in fields as diverse as phytochemistry, medicinal chemistry, pharmacology and clinical medicine. The editors and authors are to be congratulated.