Natural Products as Antiviral Agents

ISBN-13: 9781461365099 / Angielski / Miękka / 2012 / 279 str.

C. K. Chu; H. G. Cutler

Opis

During the past fifty years, thousands of natural products have been isolated from plants, fungi, and bacteria. Apart from intense searches by pharmaceutical companies for medicinals and the concentrated effort mounted by the National Cancer Institute, many of these have not been tested in biological systems. The major reasons for this appear to be, at least, twofold. First, individual researchers looking for biologically active natural products will often isolate only small amounts of material sufficient to determine a structure and calculate the specific activity for their particular bioassay systems: insufficient funds preclude re-isolating the compound unless industrial potential is foreseen. Second, the difficulty with which original structures were proved prior to 1972. This required the isolation of relatively large quantities of a natural product and there followed extensive degradation, elemental analyses of the parent and its fragments, then synthesis, piece by piece, of the molecule. All this took time and energy. No wonder that when the structure was proved the chemist was enervated. And coupled to this was the fact that many chemists were not trained to test their materials in biological systems. In contrast, today a natural product can be isolated, its mass and molecular formula determined and, if there is some serendipity, crystals may be obtained for single crystal x-ray analysis. If conditions are near perfect, it is possible to isolate and identify a novel compound in a month.

Spis treści

Progress in the Development of Natural Products for Human Immunodeficiency Viruses Infections (R.F Schinazi). StructureActivity Correlations of Natural Products with AntiHIV Activity (M. Nasr et al.). AIDSAntiviral Natural Products Research at the US National Cancer Institute (K.R. Gustafson et al.). Tannins and Related Compounds as AntiHIV Agents (K.H. Lee et al.). Mode of Action of Hypericin as an Antiretroviral Agents and Other Relevant Findings (D. Meruelo et al.). Activity of Selected Amaryllidaceae Constituets and Related Synthetic Substances Against Medically Important RNA Viruses (B. Gabrielsen et al.). Aminosugar Attenuation of HIV Infection (G.S. Jacob et al.) Plant Proteins with Antiviral Activity Against Human Immunodeficiency Virus (S. LeeHuang et al.). Antiviral Studies with Trichosanthin, A Plant Derived Single Chain Ribosome Inactivating Protein (M.S. McGrath et al.). 4 additional articles. Index.