Plants are a tremendous source for the discovery of new products of medicinal value for drug development. Today several distinct chemicals derived from plants are important drugs currently used in one or more countries in the world. Many of the drugs sold today are simple synthetic modifications or copies of the naturally obtained substances. The evolving commercial importance of secondary metabolites has in recent years resulted in a great interest in secondary metabolism, particularly in the possibility of altering the production of bioactive plant metabolites by means of tissue culture technology. Plant cell culture technologies were introduced at the end of the 1960’s as a possible tool for both studying and producing plant secondary metabolites. Different strategies, using an in vitro system, have been extensively studied to improve the production of plant chemicals. The focus of the present review is the application of tissue culture technology for the production of some important plant pharmaceuticals. Also, we describe the results of in vitro cultures and production of some important secondary metabolites obtained in our laboratory.
