Recent Updates on Pharmaceutical Potential of Plant Protease Inhibitors

Plants are rich source of chemicals that are helpful for human in many ways. The pharmacological properties of several different classes of secondary metabolic compounds isolated from different groups of plants are well known. But there are some other compounds that are different from so called secondary metabolic compounds, are also beneficial from pharmacological point of view. One of such compound is small molecular weight proteins that act as inhibitors of proteases. Proteases are essential in survival and maintenance of living organisms. But when the amount increases much higher than the optimum value, they can damage the living cells and tissues. Thus, the involvement of protease inhibitors is essentially required to regulate the amount of proteases within the living cells and tissues. In plants proteases inhibitors are helpful in protecting them from the deleterious effect of insect gut proteases and thus provide defense against insect pests. Several groups of plant protease inhibitors along with their sequences are reported. Many inhibitors are being over expressed in transgenic plants for better insecticidal property. Besides, plant protease inhibitors have enormous pharmaceutical value which is still less explored. The current knowledge of plant protease inhibitors and their pharmaceutical applications have been reviewed.