Program 1 will be responsible for the provision of all plant material that will be required by the consortial partners. These needs comprise two categories, namely, new plants for extraction and initial biological screening as well as the recollection of confirmed active plants for compound scale-up isolation leading to more detailed chemical and/or biological evaluation. This plant material will be collected on the basis of four strategies. The first strategy identifies species previously determined from ethomedical reports or from biological experimentation to have anti- cancer activity, and from which no active agent has been isolated and identified. In the second strategy, we ask collectors in the countries with which we have formal signed agreements, to collect species in genera that have been targeted previously in our plant collector's manual. A subset of this strategy is the use of the NCI Natural Products Repository to seek samples form specific locations where follow-up can be achieved through our established collaborators. The third strategy asks our collaborating collectors to bring plants to our attention which they consider worthy of study and which are not excluded by the collector's manual. Finally, we will use the resources of the consortial group to examine microorganisms associated with selected plant materials for their potential to produce novel secondary metabolites of biological interest. All materials will be received, verified, catalogued, and milled by Program 1 before being sent to Program 2 for extraction. Program 1 is responsible for the generation and deposition in a herbarium in the country of origin for each sample and at the Field Museum of Natural History (Chicago, Il), for all plant materials (both original samples and recollections) which potentially might be studied in the laboratory in the program. As it has been done in the past, Program 1 will also provide an information management capability for the data that will be generated during the course of the program. Information generated by Programs 1-5 will be collected by this program for inclusion in this database. This information will be summarized and presented in the form of different reports at regular intervals, including the regulatory scheduled NCNPDDG group meetings. In addition, the data will be available to all members of this consortial effort as raw data in a relational data structure. It has been observed in the past that such data management enables trends and patterns to be determined which can serve to increase the overall effort and/or decrease costs in the program. Finally Program 1 will provide a very significant level of literature and informational support to the fractionation and bioassay teams. Information support will be provide at three points in the project, prior to the initial plant collection (for certain strategies), during activity-guided fractionation and, for active plant samples, an in-depth retrospective analysis will be provided prior to a decision being made on recollection.
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