The emergence of drug resistant variants of the influenza virus has led to a need to identify novel and effective antiviral agents. As an alternative to synthetic drugs, the consolidation of empirical knowledge with ethnopharmacological evidence of medicinal plants offers a novel platform for the development of antiviral drugs. The aim of this study was to identify plant extracts with proven activity against the influenza virus. Extracts of fifty medicinal plants, originating from the tropical rainforests of Borneo used as herbal medicines by traditional healers to treat flu-like symptoms, were tested against the H1N1 and H3N1 subtypes of the virus. In the initial phase, in vitro micro-inhibition assays along with cytotoxicity screening were performed on MDCK cells. Most plant extracts were found to be minimally cytotoxic, indicating that the compounds linked to an ethnomedical framework were relatively innocuous, and eleven crude extracts exhibited viral inhibition against both the strains. All extracts inhibited the enzymatic activity of viral neuraminidase and four extracts were also shown to act through the hemagglutination inhibition (HI) pathway. Moreover, the samples that acted through both HI and neuraminidase inhibition (NI) evidenced more than 90% reduction in virus adsorption and penetration, thereby indicating potent action in the early stages of viral replication. Concurrent studies involving Receptor Destroying Enzyme treatments of HI extracts indicated the presence of sialic acid-like component(s) that could be responsible for hemagglutination inhibition. The manifestation of both modes of viral inhibition in a single extract suggests that there may be a synergistic effect implicating more than one active component. Overall, our results provide substantive support for the use of Borneo traditional plants as promising sources of novel anti-influenza drug candidates. Furthermore, the pathways involving inhibition of hemagglutination could be a solution to the global occurrence of viral strains resistant to neuraminidase drugs.

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The frequent emergence of drug resistant influenza viral strains emphasizes the urgent and continual need to develop new antiviral drugs. Given the encouraging findings of previous studies on antiviral compounds from plant sources, this study focused on medicinal plants from Borneo that were traditionally used to treat symptoms of influenza infection. Following the promising results of earlier investigations, four plant extracts that demonstrated multiple modes of viral inhibition were studied against wild-type and neuraminidase (NA) inhibitor-resistant strains of Types A and B influenza viruses. The extracts exhibited more pronounced activities against the wild-type viruses than the NA inhibitor-resistant strains. Variations in the antiviral potential of the extracts collected from different parts of the same plant were also evidenced in the in vitro micro-inhibition assays. Even though all plant extracts affected NA activity of all viruses, only two extracts demonstrated hemagglutination inhibitory (HI) activities against Type A pandemic H1N1 and Type B viruses. Furthermore, Receptor Destroying Enzyme (RDE) treatments of extracts exhibiting HI activities indicated the presence of sialic acid (SA)-like component(s) that may be responsible for HI activity. Since the antiviral potential of extracts was not completely suppressed by RDE, the possibility of non SA-like antiviral components cannot be ruled out. Therefore, synergistic activity between SA-like and non SA-like components contained in the plant extracts may be responsible for the demonstrated antiviral potential. The results also indicated the presence of non SA-like components that may act against other viral proteins apart from hemagglutinin (HA) and NA.