Abrell 9722430 This award supports a 24 month Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) Postdoctoral Fellowship for Dr. Leif Abrell at the Department of Marine Sciences, University of the Ryukyus, Okinawa, Japan. Dr. Abrell will work with Dr. Tatsuo Higa, Professor of Marine Chemistry, on a research project entitled, "An Investigation of Interesting Minor Bioactive Constituents from Nonconspicuous Okinawan Marine Organisms." Biomedicine has recently been the major driving force for the chemical inveqtigation of marine sponges and invertebrates. Pharmacologists, physiologists, and biochemists have shown that many of these natural products posses properties that modify fundamental life processes in ways that have important biomedical applications. These molecules are the leads that the pharmaceutical and chemical industries have begun to focus on as templates for development of the drugs for the future. The first compounds reported from these organisms were usually the major constituents and were isolated in yields large enough to provide sufficient sample size for nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR). The evolution of tools available to natural products chemists including molecule separation technologies and high field NMR instruments for solving the structures of miniature samples now warrants a deeper and more meticulous look at sample extracts for bioactive constituents. The proposed research will: 1) collect bioactive extracts from various marine invertebrate species (sponges, tunicates, and coelenterates); 2) subject the extracts to bioassay guided solvent partitioning and chromatographic fractionation to purify active components, and; 3) characterize the structures and stereochemistry of bioactive compounds. Emphasis in the proposed research will be placed on compounds which posses potency in bioactivity screens such as cancer cell lines, viruses including HIV-1, and cancer cell enzymes such as topoisomerase I and II and DNA polymerase. * **
