Natural production output

Incorporating the Kirtas system with the International Plant Names Index and SNOW-MED allows movement of the historic text into an electronic format, identihcation of current plant names, and identihcation of the symptoms treated with the plants. To complete the mining of historic herbal texts for novel drug leads we use the Natural Products Alert (NAPRALERT ) database to compare the information extracted from the historic herbal text to the reports of plant use in the current literature. The NAPRALERT database provides a summary of plants ethnopharmacological use, biochemical activities, and isolated compounds [27]. By querying each plant (with the current plant name) it is possible to identify any reports in the current literature regarding the plant. As an example, Table 4.1 shows the NAPRALERT output for Cycas rumphii. 

We promised to return to the earlier statement that a healthy development pipeline of natural product derived candidates implies that natural products will still have a role to play in modern day drug discovery. In fact, this is far from reality. Firstly, these late-stage clinical candidates reflect the output from research activities undertaken at least 10 years ago and certainly not the current situation. Secondly, there is a lack of truly novel chemical templates in the pipeline and thirdly, it is clear that very few pharmaceutical companies remain engaged, at least internally, in natural product drug discovery activities. 

All of these external resources have relied heavily on the university as a primary source. An unfortunate consequence of these activities over the past decade has been a depletion of the academic resources that have accumulated over the past 50 years. Furthermore, the availability of useful quantities from current academic research has become less likely as modern chemical techniques and instrumentation permit studies with only a few milligrams. This is especially apparent in the natural product field, as the unique diversity inherent in that group has placed such acquisition at a premium. Market demands, nevertheless, persist and have led to the emergence of synthesis factories that prepare compounds specifically for the screening market, using conventional chemical techniques. Output has been greatly enhanced at some of these centers by adoption of modular approaches in synthesis. These sources have helped to fill the void in numbers, but have done little to enhance the level of structural diversity or the cost factor. 

A significant part of the oil output is used for the isolation of natural citral, but higher capacities of synthetic citral nowadays compete with the natural product. 

More recently, Ben-Hameda et al. (57) used this combination to improve the sensitivity of the determination of Huperzine A (a natural product from Huperzia serrata used to treat Alzheimer s disease and incorporated as a food supplement). BGE concentration (acetate buffer pH = 4.6) and voltage were used as input parameters, while peak area, peak height, or migration time were individually studied as outputs. In each case, optimal ANN architecture was (2 3 1). To maximize the sensitivity, relatively high concentrations of the BGE and low voltages were required (optimum conditions were 50mM sodium acetate and 10kV). 

The synthesis of many combretastatin analogues (e.g., 18a, 18b, and 18c) clearly illustrates the power of a relatively simple natural product structure to spawn a prolific output of medicinal and combinatorial chem-... 

Figure 1 Reports of novel natural products from marine macroalgae since 1980. The search was conducted using Marinlit and ISI Web of Science, limiting output to chemistry journal research articles and notes, using a number of keywords. Hits were verified to ensure that natural products reported were new and discoveries were not double-counted. This figure may underrepresent the actual discovery rate, if natural products were reported in nonchemistry journals and/or if keywords were different from those used for the literature search.

In 1898 the first rubber factory based on the natural product, Suomen Gummitehdas Oy (later Oy Nokia Ab rubber factory), was set up to produce galoshes, i.e. overshoes. The firm specialized in rubber footwear and flourished. In 1926 it began to manufacture tyres for bicycles, and in 1934 tyres for cars. Two years later it introduced its own innovation, winter tyres for cars. The growth of the rubber industry was outstanding. In 1913, it employed over 90 employees and in 1938 as many as 2,570, or 82 per cent of the total workforce of the main chemical industry and 42 per cent of its output, as shown in table 1. Before the Winter War of 1939-40, rubber manufacturing was one of the three biggest chemistry-related branches of Finnish industry. ... 

In case the determination of the investment by means of the assessment method described above is not possible for the operator, for instance, for personnel reasons, he can contact plant manufacturers and ask for so-called target price offers. For the calculation of target price offers, information on the product output and quality will usually be sufficient for the plant manufacturer, provided he has already built plants for similar products. It is important to notice that those target price offers are non-binding and naturally vague, i.e. the operator cannot force the plant manufacturer to realize the project for the price stated therein. 

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