About the Book
These plenary lectures report new methods of standardizing and exploiting the chemical and pharmacological screening of plants in the search for new plant-derived drugs and therapeutically useful substances. Some present a general view of new biological, pharmacologically active, and/or therapeutically applicable plant substances of the alkaloid, terpeniol and lignin, class as well as dimer-structured combinations. Pharmacologically oriented information on new plant antitumor agents, natural substances affecting the liver, and reports on interesting drugs from India’s and south America’s store of folk medicine demonstrate, the necessity of a close international co-operation between botanists, chemists, and pharmacologists. A further review article treats the chemical modification of natural substances, aimed at optimizing the effectiveness of drugs.
Contents
1. Problems and Prospects of Discovering New Drugs from Higher Plants by Pharmacological Screening 2. Pharmacological Approaches to Natural Product Screening and Evaluation 3. Recent Experimental and Clinical Data Concerning Antitumor and Cytotoxic Agents from Plants 4. Recent Advances in the Field of Antibiotics 5. Progress in the chemistry of alkaloids with pharmacological or biological activity. 6. Plant Mono-, Di- and Sesquiterpenoids with Pharmacological or Therapeutical Activity 7. Saponins with-Biological and Pharmacological Activity 8. Dimeric Natural Compounds with Pharmacological Activity 9. Chemical and Biological Investigations on Indian Medicinal Plants 10. Chemistry of Neolignans with Potential Biological Activity 11. Natural Substances with Effects on the Liver 12. The Modification of Natural Substances in the Modern Drug Synthesis
