title: Can ethnopharmacology contribute to the development of new anticancer drugs?
abstract: Ethnopharmacologic and ethnomedical information has been poorly utilized in the past in the search for new and effective treatments for cancer. In spite of this, plants have been a very viable source of clinically useful compounds, leads for synthetic modification and tools for mechanistic studies. In this paper, a new strategy for the discovery of anticancer agents from plants is proposed in which ethnomedical information is correlated against pertinent published chemical and biological information, resulting in a prioritization of plants for collection. Authenticated plants are extracted and the extracts tested in a broad array of more than 20 human cancer cell and mechanism-based assays through a cooperative research program involving a university, a research institute and a pharmaceutical company. Bioactivity-directed fractionation will be carried out at all three sites, with a view to identifying novel compounds which will serve as candidates for preclinical testing.
authors.affiliation: Program for Collaborative Research in the Pharmaceutical Sciences, College of Pharmacy, University of Illinois, Chicago 60612.
authors.forename: G A
authors.initials: GA
authors.lastname: Cordell
authors.forename: C W
authors.initials: CW
authors.lastname: Beecher
authors.forename: J M
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Pezzuto
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D000972:Antineoplastic Agents, Phytogenic / Q000494:pharmacology*; D005007:Ethnology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D009316:National Institutes of Health (U.S.); D010600:Pharmacology; D011247:Pregnancy; D014481:United States
chemical_list: D000972:Antineoplastic Agents, Phytogenic