News of The Society

Summary of Annual Meeting

On Apri l 21 and 22 the Society held its Four th Annual Meeting at the Universi ty of Wisconsin, Madison. Prof. S. Morris Kupchan, Program Chairman, had arranged for excellent facil i t ies and services for the meeting. The weatherman cooperated in fine fashion so the total environment of the meeting left l i t t le to be desired. This was not quite true as fa r as at tendance was concerned. Only about fifty members and their guests were in attendance. Considering the quali ty of the contributed and symposium papers presented, the audience was disappointingly small. However, when we remem- ber that the Society has but a few over three hundred members perhaps a turnout of one-sixth of the membership should not be cause for disappointment. Notably, we have a sizeable corps of members that has at tended all four annual meetings of the Society. Though having as many demands on their time as has anyone else, these people have found it worth their while to give up one weekend a year for conferem, e with fellow economic botanists.

The prooTam of the meeting followed the pat tern of past years with Saturday morning and afternoon sessions of contributed short papers on any topic re la t ing to economic botany and Sunday morning devoted to a symposium on In tegra ted Research in Economic Botany. Interst ices were nicely filled by luncheons with invited speakers on Saturday and Sunday and by a convivial reception and the Annual Dinner on Satur- day evening.

Dr. R. 1,. Clodius, Vice President, Academic Affairs and Professor of Agricul tural Economics, Universi ty of Wisconsin, was the Saturday luncheon speaker. He discussed very candidly and lucidly some of the major problems confronting inst i tut ions of higher education today as they are faced with a rapidly expanding enrollment. Physcial facil i t ies to accommodate doubled or tr ipled enrollments, though a serious problem, is not the most crucial one. Their real problem is to find enough teachers and /o r satis- factory new teaching methods to assure an effective teacher-student ratio. Our grad- uate schools are .just not turning out enough graduates to fill the needs of both teach- ing and research.

At the Sunday luncheon Dr. H. A. Senn, Director, Biotron and Professor of Botany, Universi ty of Wisconsin described the multi-million dollar controlled environment re- search faci l i ty being built on the Madison campus. Designed to permit control of all measurable environmental factors, the biotron will include facil i t ies for research with animals as well as plants.

Following" the Annual Dinner and Business Meeting on Saturday night, Dr. Paul C. Mangelsdorf of Harva rd Universi ty gave the President ia l Address. His subject was Indian.% Corn, and Civilization which he developed into an exceedingly interest ing story on the origin and evolutionary development of corn. Even though Dr. M'angels- doff and his co-workers have already published most of the data presented in his address, the story certainly merits re-tel l ing in the pages of ECONOMIC BOTANY.

The symposium on Integrated Research in Economic Botany IV: Tumor Inhibitors from Plant So~rces lived up to the high standards we have come to expect of this main feature of our meeting program. The six symposium speakers collectively presented a well rounded picture of the past, present, and potential usefulness of plant-der ived materials as cancer chemotherapeutic agents. Dr. Jona than L. I iar twell , Cancer Chemo- therapy National Service Center, NIH, traced the his tory of plant-derived folk rein- edies for cancer since several hundred years B.C. Some of the species which have been

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mentioned repeatedly down through the ages as cancer cures are showing anti-tumor activity in our present screening program. Dr. R. E. Perdue, Jr., New Crops Research Branch, USDA, presented some of the challenging problems confronting botanists en- gaged in supplying several thousand plant samples a year for anti-tumor screening. Devising effective test systems for plant extracts was the principal theme of the paper presented by Dr. Joseph Leiter, Cancer Chemotherapy National Service Center N]H. He compared screening plant materials for anti-tumor activity to a game of dice. In the initial screening, success will be largely governed by chance. But as information accumulates on the nature and distribution of anti-tumor compounds, the dice become loaded in favor of the "house." Dr. S. Morris Kupchan, Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, University of Wisconsin, using several specific examples, discussed research involved with fractionation, isolation, and characterization of tumor inhibitors from plant sources. This was followed by a paper on the antineoplastic alkaloids from Vinca rosea L., given by Dr. Gordon Svoboda, Eli Lilly and Company. Dr. Emil Frei III , National Cancer Institute, NIH, concluded the symposium with a very interesting report on clinical studies of plant-derived substances with anti-tumor activity.

Results of the election of officers were announced at the Annual Business Meeting. Dr. S. Morris Kupchan, University of Wisconsin, was elected President for the coming year. Dr. Robert F. Raffauf, Smith, Kline, and French Laboratories, ~vas elected to the Council (3 years) and Dr. Walter H. Hodge, National Science Foundation, was re- elected to the Council (3 years). Dr. Hodge was chosen by the Council to continue as their Chairman for the next year. The Council selected the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill area of North Carolina as the site of the 5th Annual Meeting to be held early in May. 1964.

--QUENTIN JONES, SECRV~ARY