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DOI: 10.1055/s-0034-1382475
Discovery of anticancer lead compounds from plants of Vietnam
As part of a P01 collaborative research between the University of Illinois at Chicago and the Ohio State University field expeditions were undertaken in Vietnam from 2004 – 2011 to collect plants for study as potential anticancer agents. The field expeditions resulted in the acquisition of 1,019 primary screening samples, comprising of 445 phytochemically underexplored endemic species. Extracts of 824 samples represented by 398 species were submitted for cytotoxicity (HT-29 and CCD-112CoN) as well as mechanism-based assays (NF-κB p65, proteasome, and MTP inhibition). As a result, 17 new and 42 known compounds with in vitro activity (IC50 < 10 µM) were purified by cytotoxicity-guided fractionation. This research has demonstrated that tropical plants continue to provide numerous chemically diverse secondary metabolites with activity and selectivity for cancer cells.