Students will study European herbal medicines using European Medicine Agency and European Pharmacopoeia databases, meta-analysis and scientific reviews to learn well established uses and traditionally uses of herbal medicines.

There are two types of herbal medicinal products registered as medicines in Europe, those registered as drugs with well established medical use and those authorised as based only on their traditional use. They will learn why very few medicinal products from plants have been registered as medicines with well established use. They will show in scientific posters their own drawings of their research using different software tools.

The topic of medicinal plants is a very interesting topic to introduce the scientific method for the student by asking student to write a scientific article or a scientific poster because it contains very different STEM topics and it is easy to adapt it for future artists.

Near 200 herbal drugs from the European Medicine Agency (EMA) will be studied by students from Institut Pompeu Fabra High School and other students from schools participating in 5cities.eu Erasmus+ project. The student will analyse the information found in the EMA website and scientific websites to find reviews, meta-analysis, clinical trials and other scientific studies (Google Scholar and Medline.) They will find information about the medicinal plant, the herbal drug (part of the plant used in therapy), the active principles (chemical responsible of pharmacological activity), therapeutic indications and adverse effects.

After finding the active principles names in the previous databases, they will locate their identification numbers in the ZINC15 database for every herbal drug. They will also find the pharmacological receptor in the protein data bank.

It is important to find the beautiful 3D shapes of both active principles and proteins from the previous links in order to draw them interacting in your posters.