China is a country rich in medicinal plants because of its wide territory and variety of geography. Plentiful experience has been accumulated and recorded in the long history of traditional Chinese medicine, but the mechanisms of many Chinese medicines remain unclear. This fascinating research field has been attracting tremendous research efforts of scientists in chemistry, biology and medical sciences. Some successes have been achieved, from which the antimalarial artemisinin (qinghaosu) is an example. In this paper a few important recent researches on the bioactive components from the Chinese medicinal plants are discussed. These are the antitumor tubeimosides, isolated from bolbstemma paniculatum; cholinergic decumbenines from Corydalis decumbens; antihipatitis sarmentosin from Sedum sarmentosium; antiHIV active principle licochalcone A from Glycyrrhiza inflata; cholinesterase inhibitor huperzine A from Huperzia serrata, which is already used tor treatment of Alzheimer's disease in China; miotic agent baogongteng A from Erycibe obstusifolia;, antifungal pseudolaric acid B from Pseudolarix kaempferiand insecticide stemona alkaloids from Stemonaplants. Their structure elucidation, total syntheses, chemistry, bioactivities and some of the clinical trial results will be presented.
Publication DOI: 10.1016/S1572-5995(00)80017-4Publisher: New York: Elsevier
Editors: Atta-ur-Rahman
Institutions: Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica, Academia Sinica, Shanghai, China
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