Novel Strategies for the Discovery of Plant-Derived Anticancer Agents

Work has continued on the investigation of plants, collected mainly from tropical rainforests, as potential sources of new cancer chemotherapeutic agents. About 400 primary samples are obtained each year, with the chloroform-soluble extract of each being screened against a battery of in vitro assays housed at the three consortial sites in our current National Cooperative Drug Discovery Group (NCDDG) research project. An HPLC-MS dereplication procedure designed to screen out "nuisance" compounds has been refined. Several hundred secondary metabolites that are active in one or more of the primary assays utilized have been obtained in the project to date, and are representative of wide chemical diversity. Some of these are also active in various in vivo assays, inclusive of the hollow fiber assay, which was installed recently as part of our collaborative research effort. A number of bioactive compounds of interest to the project are described.