Possible agents against HIV are a major focus of 13 papers from a symposium at the American Chemical Society meeting in New York City, August 1991, exploring generally the use of chemicals derived from natural materials as antiviral agents. Among the substances considered are tannins, hypericin, ama

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...