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In many plants, the full expression of therapeutic value only emerges when their components are allowed to work in concert.
Joel Stanley
Co-founder and CEO
Ajna BioSciences
For decades, modern pharmacology has pursued a singular goal: to isolate the active ingredient, refine it, and set aside the supporting compounds once considered irrelevant. This model has brought us extraordinary therapies. But when it is the only model, it limits how we treat patients and their unique conditions. Some conditions are too complex for a single compound to fix. And some therapeutic effects come not from isolation of a molecule, but from the collaboration of many.
This is the promise of botanical drugs: a new class of clinically validated therapies that benefit from the full spectrum of a plant’s chemistry while meeting the highest scientific and regulatory standards of modern drug development.
Unlike traditional single-molecule drugs derived from plants, such as morphine or Epidiolex, botanical drugs preserve the complex web of compounds in their source material. This complexity is unique to botanical medicine, as it involves multiple compounds that work together to enhance absorption, balance psychoactivity, or broaden therapeutic effects. This is known as the Entourage Effect.
The term was first coined by the late Raphael Mechoulam, widely regarded as the godfather of cannabinoid science. He and his colleagues observed that cannabinoids like THC acted differently, and often more effectively, when in the presence of other naturally occurring compounds such as CBD, CBG, and terpenes like myrcene. “A single molecule, a single compound from cannabis, is not as effective as the whole plant,” Mechoulam noted. This insight helped shift the paradigm from isolating compounds toward understanding how cannabinoids work in a synergistic system– a principle now central to botanical drug development.
But this isn’t unique to cannabis. It appears to extend to psychoactive mushrooms, where naturally occurring compounds like silocin, baeocystin, norbaeocystin, and aeruginascin may work together to produce more potent and sustained therapeutic outcomes than synthetic psilocybin alone. Research shows that full-spectrum mushroom extracts can have a stronger and longer-lasting effect on synaptic plasticity, suggesting the Entourage Effect may be at play in fungi as well.
The principle likely extends even further, to plants that we haven’t had the technology to examine in this way until now. In many plants, the full expression of therapeutic value only emerges when their components are allowed to work in concert.
Science is catching up to what nature has consistently demonstrated: systems respond to systems. Humans are not simple machines but complex biological ecosystems, with countless cell receptor sites capable of interacting with multiple molecules at once. For most of human history, our bodies evolved alongside plants, interfacing with their compounds in whole, synergistic form. It’s only in the last century, driven by pharmaceutical convenience, that we began isolating and concentrating single molecules. While that has brought life-saving advances, it has also introduced a new era of side effects, tolerances, and unintended consequences. It is in our DNA to interact with the full spectrum of nature’s chemistry– and many patients are instinctively returning to that interface. That’s why many patients with complex, chronic, neurodevelopmental, or multifactorial conditions are turning to botanical options, sometimes without formal guidance, to find what conventional drugs have not yet delivered.
We now have the technology to meet this complexity with precision. Analytical chemistry, biomanufacturing, and stringent quality controls enable the mapping, measurement, and standardization of the full chemical fingerprint of a plant-based therapeutic. This is what the FDA requires for botanical drug approval: evidence, consistency, and repeatability.
In this way, a botanical drug is not a supplement with better packaging. It is a pharmaceutical, developed within a rigorous regulatory framework. But it is also a mindset shift that sees complexity as a therapeutic advantage rather than something too complex to standardize.
This entry comes at a time when patient demand is accelerating. The global botanical drug market, valued at $37.5B in 2024, is projected to reach over $58B by 2033. In the U.S., the market is expected to grow more than 10% annually. This is a more profound shift in what patients want from medicine: not just control over symptoms, but collaboration with the body’s systems.
The pharmaceutical playbook has been focused on disrupting pathways with isolated, novel compounds. But healing often requires restoring balance. Ironically, it may be multi-compound natural drugs, with foundations in ancient use, that now disrupt the entrenched norm of single-target molecules and their side effects. Botanical drugs open the door to that possibility. They offer a path to serve conditions where conventional approaches have fallen short, and to do so with credibility, safety, and evidence.
We don’t have to choose between nature and science. We need both. And now, for the first time, we have a regulatory and technological path to achieve this goal.
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