1. Foreword 1. Joseph J.Y. Sung (The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong). 2. Foreword: The most important human heritage: our knowledge of the use of plants as a resource for drug development. Rob Verpoorte (Leiden University, The Netherlands). PREFACE. Evandro Fei Fang, Tzi Bun Ng. PART I. Lectins: From biological recognition molecules to variable medicinal applications. 1. Lectins: Personal Comments of Nathan Sharon Taken from His Memoirs (Translation from Hebrew) . 2. The History of Lectinology. 3. Animal and Human Lectins. 4. Lectins of Marine Origin and their Clinical Applications. 5. Medicinal applications of plant lectins. PART II Structural and functional insights into medicinal ribonucleases. 6. Plant nucleases from nuclease I family: their properties and antitumor potential. 7. Bovine Seminal Ribonuclease and its special features: when two is better than one. PART III The perspectives for ribosome inactivating proteins: unveiling the working mechanisms and potential medicinal benefits. 8. The Discovery of MAP30 and Elucidation of its Medicinal Activities. 9. Ribosome Inactivating Proteins from Plants: Biological Properties and their Use in Experimental Therapy. 10. Current status & Biomedical applications of Ribosome-inactivating proteins. PART IV The research history of protease inhibitors and their health implications. 11. The Health Benefits of the Bowman-Birk Inhibitor. 12. Peptidic inhibitors of serine proteinases of plant origin. 13. Anti-tumor effect of synthetic serine protease inhibitor. 14. A landscape of the health benefits of different natural protease inhibitors. PART V Plethora of health benefits from small molecules: From bench-top to clinical settings. 15. Autophagy upregulation as a therapeutic strategy for neurodegenerative diseases. 16. Rapamycin - current and future uses. 17. Eating, drinking, smoking and cancer prevention: a focus on acetaldehyde. 18. The use of edible mushroom water soluble polysaccharides in the treatment and prevention of chronic diseases: a mechanistic approach.19. Essential Oil Constituents: Biodiversity and their Applicability for Cancer Therapy. PART VI Medicinal compounds from the garden: a bird's eye view of one mushroom, one fruit, one insect, and others.20. Recent research on pharmacological activities of the medicinal fungus Cordyceps sinensis. 21. The bitter fruit with sweet health benefits: A comprehensive synopsis of recent research progress on medicinal properties of Momordica charantia. 22. Bioactive constituents of the silk worm Bombyx mori. 23. Proteins with anticancer and antimicobial activities from mammals, submammalian vertebrates and invertebrates. 24. Defense proteins with antiproliferative and antimicrobial activities from fungi and bacteria. PART VII Modernizing investigations of traditional Chinese medicine at the molecular level. 25. The role of the GP-TCM Research Association to modernization and globalization of Traditional Chinese Medicine. 26. High-throughput screening in traditional Chinese medicine-based drug discovery. PART VIII Questions and future perspectives. 27. Achievements, questions arising and future outlook on the path to discover new medicinal compounds. Index.