Pharmaceutical industry vincristine

The almost simultaneous discovery of vinblastine (1) by Noble et al. (57) and by Svoboda and co-workers (58) is one of the the most publicized events in alkaloid chemistry. Since its initial discovery, vinblastine (1) has been reisolated from C. roseus several times (47 9,57-60,) and it has also obtained from C. ovalis (32), C. longifolius (33), and C. trichophyllus (60). The large-scale separation of vinblastine (1) and vincristine (2) from C. roseus received attention from pharmaceutical industries, and several procedures for the separation of these alkaloids have been reported in the patent literature (61-71). 

Higher plants have evolved an extraordinary variety of secondary metabolic pathways, the resulting products of which have been put to use by man providing pharmaceuticals for drug use, insecticides and various allelochemicals for pest control, and extracts for the flavor and fragrances industries. In spite of advances in synthetic organic chemistry, plants remain a major source of natural products, particularly in the specialty chemicals industry. Compounds, such as the insecticide derived from Azadiraohta indioa or the antitumor alkaloids vinblastine and vincristine found in periwinkle (Catharanthus roseus) (1 ), have complicated structures which preclude at the present time the development of an economical chemical synthesis (Figure 1). In the case of... 

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