Novel Bioactive
Compounds
from Plants
Over the last few
years there has been a resurgence of interest in the
investigation of organisms of terrestrial and marine origin for
the identification of novel active chemotypes as leads for drug
development. 1-3 For example, of 87 approved
anticancer drugs available in 1994, 62% were either of natural
origin or were modeled on natural product lead compounds. 1
Therefore, as a result of the excellent track record of natural
product investigations in affording new drugs, coupled with the
loss of biodiversity presently occurring in ecosystems all over
the world, it has been argued that natural product drug discovery
research should intensify rather than diminish or remain static
in the coming years. 1
Recent collaborative
work phytochemical performed in the author's laboratory has been
aimed at three types of biologically active compounds from higher
plants, with potential utility as cancer chemotherapeutic agents,4
cancer chemopreventives,5 and dietary sucrose
substitutes, 6 respectively. Efforts directed towards
the discovery of anticancer agents have occurred within the
framework of a National Cooperative Natural Product Drug
Discovery Groups project, funded by the U.S. National Cancer
Institute, and involving the participation of a university, a
private research institute, and a pharmaceutical company. 4 The
work on cancer chemoprevention is another large research program,
having individual projects on plant collection, phytochemistry, in
vitro biology, and synthetic chemistry. 5 The
research to find new sweet substances has been of a smaller
scale, but has emphasized field observations on candidate
sweet-tasting plants. 6 Structurally characterized
bioactive isolates afforded in these programs have included
substances in the alkaloid, flavonoid, lignan, proanthocyanidin,
stilbenoid, and terpenoid classes of plant secondary metabolites.
4-6
Acknowledgment.
The author gratefully acknowledges funding from NIH grants
CA48112 (P.I. , J.M. Pezzuto), CA5
References
1. Cragg, G.M.; Newman, D. J.; Snader, K. M. J. Nat. Prod.
1997, 60, 52-60
2. Kinghorn, A. D.; Balandrin, M. F.; Eds. Human Medicinal
Agents from Plants; ACS Symp. Ser. No. 534, American
Chemical Society, Washington DC, 1993
3. Gullo, V. R.; Ed. The Discovery of Natural Produtcs with
Therapeutic Potential; Butterworth-Heineman; Boston, 1994
4. Kinghorn, A. D.; Farnsworth, N. R.; Beecher, C. W. W. ;
Soejarto, D. D.; Cordell, G. A.; Pezzuto, J. M.; Wani, M. C.;
Brown. D. M.; O'Neill, M. J.; Lewis, J. A.; Besterman, J. M.; Int.
J. Pharmacog. (Supp.) 1995, 33, 48-58
5. Pezzuto, J.M.; In Recent Advances in Phytochemistry, Vol.
29, Phytochemistry of Medicinal Plants (Arnason, J.T.; Mata, R.;
Romeo, J. T.; Eds.); Plenum:New York, 1995; pp 19-45
6. Kinghorn, A. D.; Kennely, E. J. ; J. Chem. Educ. 1995,
72, 676-680
Voltar a
página anterior