Project Number: 6408-21410-007-03
Project Type: Specific Cooperative Agreement

Start Date: Sep 06, 2006
End Date: Jul 31, 2011

Objective:
The overall goal of this project is to discover, develop and foster commercialization of new bioactive natural products as new pharmaceuticals or agrichemicals, and to identify, characterize, and develop plants for production of pharmaceuticals or pesticides as potential alternative crops.

Approach:
(1) Development of strategies for rational collection of terrestrial, aquatic, and marine plants, as well as microbes, as a source of novel bioactive natural products. (2) Discovery and development of novel pharmaceutically or agriculturally useful natural products from higher plants. (3) Identification and investigation of new mechanistic targets that may be used in the discovery of pesticides and anti-infective agents. (4) Development of methods and technologies to authenticate, pharmacologically characterize, and chemically analyze higher plants as sources of pharmaceuticals or botanical supplements. (5) Investigations of selections, cloning, propagation, agronomics, cultivation, harvesting, and processing of medicinal plants in relation to the chemistry of desired pharmaceutically or agriculturally useful natural products.