Book Review

Advances in Medicinal Phytochemistry. Edited by Sir D. Barton and W. D. Ollis, John Libbey Eurotext Ltd, Paris, 1986, pp. 195.

This volume is an account of the pro- ceedings of the International Symposium on Medicinal Phytochemistry held in Marrakesh, Morocco from the 17-18th January 1985. The book contains some 23 papers consisting of review articles and research reports covering various multidisciplinary aspects of the chemical, pharmacological and toxicological sig- nificance of a number of natural prod- ucts of current importance. A number of papers describe the biosynthesis of a va- riety of plant derived organic com- pounds which reflects the continuing current interest in this discipline.

The areas of natural product research represented in this publication include: the isolation and structure elucida- tion of a number of novel, biologically active natural products such as the sesquiterpene lactones and alkaloids from members of the Compositae, dammarane-type triterpenoids from Ginseng and limonoids from Xylocarpus sps.; one chapter deals with the popular technique of in oifro cell culture for

determining cytotoxic properties of nat- ural products, whilst others include syn- theses of a range of important natural products of possible or known therapeu- tic value, e.g. the dimeric alkaloid vin- cristine. Some chapters are more general in their approach and provide a broad outline of recent research in areas such as the methodology of research on medici- nal plants, and current levels of separa- tion, isolation and structural analysis of natural products. The development of biological systems to assess natural products for their possible use in human and veterinary medicine are described in a couple of papers.

Unfortunately, few papers combined the chemical characteristics of isolated natural products with their pharmaco- logical and toxicological activities and vice versa. In fact, one or two failed to include any chemical data at all which was surprising considering the title of the book. However, some authors did corre- late chemical structure with biological activity, a vitally important aspect if we are to develop potent new drugs with selective biological activities. This was achieved in one particular paper on quassinoids, the bitter principles of the Simaroubaceous plants, which possess

a wide range of biological activities ranging from antileukemic, amoebicidal, antiviral, anti-inflammatory and anti- malarial properties. The necessary chem- ical characteristics required for activity were discussed along with suggestions for future drug development.

The volume does suffer from one major drawback in common with many publications of its type and this is that the material in the book is outdated compared with the current literature. This is inevitable considering the time lapse between the actual Conference and publication of the monographs.

Overall this book is well presented although some chapters are poorly illustrated. Furthermore, some of the chemical structures are inadequately numbered making the text difficult to follow in some cases. This was particu- larly noted in some of the biosynthetic chapters. However, the majority of the book was clear and concise and will appeal to a wide range of phytochemists and pharmacologists interested in a vari- ety of natural products.

GAVIN BROOKS The School of Pharmacy

University of London

xii PHYTOTHERAPY RESEARCH, VOL. 1, NO. 3,1987 Heyden & Son Limited, 1987