Pharmacognosy
terrasig | November 19, 2007As we approach 100,000 visitors since joining ScienceBlogs I am amazed to still be getting 500-700 visits per month at the old home of Terra Sigillata, all without any promotion or new posts. The most-visited of the old posts is the following which appeared originally on 21 February 2006.
Much of humankind's experience with pharmacologically-active natural products has been through the mind-altering effects of plants used in religious ceremonies.
Today [21 Feb 2006], the US Supreme Court upheld a decision to permit a New Mexico sect of a Brazilian religious order to continue using an…
terrasig | November 16, 2007You just never know - some weeks you don't get The Friday Fermentable; other weeks you get two posts.
Well, several readers gave me the heads up this week about an NPR story about resveratrol supplements. You may remember that this is the chemical present in red wine that kills cancer cells in culture and, as we discussed here, extends the lifespan in yeast when used at extremely high concentrations.
Turns out that our analytical chemistry colleagues at ConsumerLab.com have revealed that a great many resveratrol supplements don't even come close to having the labeled amounts of the chemical…
terrasig | November 7, 2007Orac's recent post, A Real Death By Homeopathy, led me to dig through the archives at my old blog and reprint one of my first posts, this one from 6 January 2006. As a natural products researcher, I often see homeopathy associated with herbal medicines, the latter of which has often been the source of beneficial pharmaceuticals. In sharp contrast, homeopathy is based on a faulty 19th century principle that is the direct opposite of dose-response pharmacology and I intended to comment briefly on the distinction, as stimulated by a misleading picture on the cover of one of my favorite print…
terrasig | October 31, 2007Welcome, Reader: This post was updated on Halloween 2009 to remedy linkrot and add an interesting tidbit on the famous Macbeth passage. As it is likely you ended up here via a search engine, click here to go to the updated post.
Have you ever wondered, perhaps on 31 October, why witches are depicted as riding brooms?
The answer is alluded to by Karmen Franklin at Chaotic Utopia in her post as to why witches need to know their plant biology.
The excerpts I'm about to give you come from a superb and accessible pharmacology text entitled, "Murder, Magic, and Medicine," by John Mann, host of the…
terrasig | October 19, 2007In a post the other day, we noted that the semi-synthetic natural product, ixabepilone, approved for advanced breast cancer was derived from a soil bacterium. Colleague PharmCanuck reminded us that the soil is not a new source for drugs: the anthracyclines, daunorubicin and doxorubicin, are derived from a strain of Streptomyces found growing on a 13th century castle along the Adriatic Sea (hence the brand name for doxorubicin, Adriamycin). Amazingly, Adriamycin remains a foundation of many breast cancer chemo regimens more than 30 years after its approval.
While we speak here quite often…
terrasig | October 16, 2007As we discussed here yesterday, ixabepilone, a semi-synthetic anticancer drug derived from a soil bacterium was up for review by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Just over a half hour ago the manufacturer, Bristol-Myers Squibb, announced that the drug has indeed been approved for the treatment of advanced breast cancer. The drug will be sold under the trade name, Ixempra.
"Previously, patients with aggressive metastatic or locally advanced breast cancer no longer responding to currently available chemotherapies had limited treatment options," said Linda Vahdat, M.D., Associate…
terrasig | May 1, 2007Today's edition of the NCI Cancer Bulletin features another natural product clinical trial, this time for depsipeptide in T-cell lymphoma.
Depsipeptide (Romidepsin or FR901228) is an early histone deacetylase inhibitor isolated from fermentation of Chromobacterium violaceum. Several histone deacetylase inhibitors are in clinical trials for various cancers and many are derived from natural products. However, the first HDAC inhibitor approved by FDA is a synthetic compound, SAHA or vorinostat (Zolinza), also for T-cell lymphoma.
What is it about T-cell lymphoma that attracts the development…
terrasig | March 20, 2007So say the American elder statesmen of natural products in the 2007 update of their periodic review of the subject to be published in the 23 March issue of the Journal of Natural Products. (Details are in this Reuters article with by Julie Steenhuysen). I will post more about the article when I get my hands on it, but it comes from NCI's Dr David Newman and recently-retired Dr Gordon Cragg. Cragg had led the NCI Natural Products Branch, a position that Newman now holds.
Newman and colleague Gordon Cragg reviewed the origins of new drugs developed in the past quarter-century and found that…
terrasig | January 17, 2007While I wait for my copy of Dan Hurley's book, "Natural Causes: Death, Lies and Politics in America's Vitamin and Herbal Supplement Industry," it is interesting to read the media reports on his interviews and the responses from the dietary supplement industry.
While the Natural Products Association has simply responded with a measured, educational piece that does not mention Hurley by name, the Council for Responsible Nutrition was all over the wires today dismissing the book as, "not credible."
Some of the most thoughtful discussion today came from CBS News's Public Eye site and a post by…
terrasig | January 16, 2007Brazilian researchers have been experimenting with an gel containing an algae-based anti-HIV compound designed for use by women to prevent the spread of the virus.
Derived from the Brazilian brown alga, Dictyota pfaffii, two papers are available the describe the isolation and biological activity of the most active of the components, the dolabellane diterpene 8,10,18-trihydroxy-2,6-dolabelladiene. The compound does indeed appear to inhibit HIV reverse transcriptase at concentrations (about 16 micromolar) that can be maintained in a vaginal gel preparation.
Human trials are expected to being…
terrasig | December 21, 2006As we discussed briefly on Tuesday, trial results published in the Annals of Internal Medicine revealed that alternative botanical supplements containing black cohosh were without benefit relative to placebo in treating the vasomotor symptoms (e.g., hot flashes, night sweats) of peri- and postmenopausal women.
The Cheerful Oncologist followed up with a post entitled, "Oh M'Gosh! Black Cohosh Squashed and That's No Bosh!, where Doc Hildreth cited another 2006 study from Mayo Clinic investigators demonstrating lack of efficacy of black cohosh extracts against hot flashes. (He noted later that…
terrasig | December 18, 2006Wasn't able to get off an original post today so I'll direct Terra Sig readers to an excellent interview written by Carl Zimmer. As Carl writes,
Discover chose Jay Keasling as their scientist of the year and asked me to interview him. Keasling, who directs the Berkeley Center for Synthetic Biology, is trying to get either E. coli or yeast to crank out a powerful malaria drug normally only made by the sweet wormwood plant. I had already been getting familiar with Keasling's work, since it is a great example of the sort of work that's being done on E coli, the subject of my book. So it was a…
terrasig | November 17, 2006"It's shameless," says David Colquhoun, professor of pharmacology at University College London. "Medicines work or don't work, and they should be labelled accordingly," he says.
Professor Colquhoun is quoted in today's New Scientist in response to the first registration of an herbal product (arnica gel) in the UK's Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA).
Mind you, this effort aims only to provide a registry of a product's name and purity, not efficacy:
For a herbal medicine to be allowed on the register, its maker must show that it is safe and manufactured to a…
terrasig | November 2, 2006Earlier this week during Chris Mooney's NC visit, I noted two articles in the Wall Street Journal and New York Times on reports of caloric restriction (CR) and the possibility that some drugs might replicate the health benefits of CR. The coincidence seemed quite odd, so I suspected that some major scientific publication was in the hopper.
Indeed, as revealed by Shelley Batts at Retrospectacle, the red wine antioxidant resveratrol has now been shown to increase lifespan in mice in a paper reported in this week's issue of Nature (btw, vote for Shelley here to receive a $5000 student blogger…
terrasig | October 26, 2006If you've been working in this field for any period of time, cocktail party discussions or talks with students invariably turn to nature's greatest trove of biologically-active compounds, those that act on the central nervous system (CNS) as stimulants, euphorics, and hallucinogens.
So, over the last couple of days, I've been enjoying the posts by my relatively new compatriot here at ScienceBlogs, SciBling for short, The Molecule of the Day. I have no clue as to who he/she is or where they are other than it is written, "by a chemist who enjoys rambling about the relationship between…
terrasig | September 10, 2006Most of last week's posts were about music, so I thought I'd round out the holy trinity of sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll.
Traveling this weekend gave me an opportunity to indulge in one of my secret guilty pleasures: reading USA TODAY.
First up, as it were, is Kitty Bean Yancey's story on the opportunity for Atlanta-based passengers to join the mile-high club in a private plane for just $299:
Q: Who goes on these flights?
A: Couples from 18 and 19 up to their 60s. I've taken between 75 and 100 in five years. I've had people fly in from New York, New Jersey and Miami just to do the mile-high…
terrasig | July 19, 2006While we're on the topic of death and acknowledging that 70-ish is a life well-lived, I'd note that experimental pharmacologist and legendary gonzo journalist, Dr Hunter S Thompson, would have been 69 yesterday.
His widow, Anita, keeps a blog at their fortified Owl Farm estate and posted this loving tribute to The Good Doctor yesterday.
Although we were live-blogging from Aspen last week, we're certainly not the kind of folks to go poking around in Mrs Thompson's business up Woody Creek Road - plus, I really do fear the remaining explosives, especially with a 4-year-old running wild and…
terrasig | July 18, 2006Monday's contest to win $50 decoding the chemical and historical nature of the Terra Sigillata banner masthead got such a response that I didn't even expect it. Amazingly, one entrant answered 4 of the 5 questions correctly, with the 5th being closest of anyone.
I'll be contacting the lucky feller forthwith regarding delivery of his fifty American dollars. The answers will follow in subsequent posts, but here are the questions once again of you care to exercise your mind:
1. What is the complete name of the dude on the righthand side of the banner and why do you think I picked him to as the…
terrasig | July 16, 2006I've never properly acknowledged the commercial artist, Mr Brien O'Reilly of SaBOR Design, who designed the content-rich, scientific eye-candy banner in the masthead above for the Sb version of Terra Sigillata.
So, I'd like to kick off the week raising awareness of the banner and advertising Mr O'Reilly's talents and services by asking some questions of you about the design elements of the banner. And, since I know that many readers of Terra Sig are poor graduate students or postdoctoral fellows, I'm well-aware that nothing gets your attention like cash-for-knowledge. (Well, yes, free…