A Symposium in Honor of Richard G. Powell, a Long-Time Associate

Oct 1, 2015 - reported in 1970.1 It was eventually approved as omacetaxine mepesuccinate by the U.S. FDA as an antileukemic agent in. 2012.2 Dr. Powel...
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Editorial pubs.acs.org/jnp

A Symposium in Honor of Richard G. Powell, a Long-Time Associate Editor of the Journal of Natural Products at San Antonio, San Antonio, Texas) presented an interesting talk entitled “North American Plants Remain an Excellent Source for Compounds with Anticancer Potential”. These plants were obtained from the San Antonio Botanical Garden and yielded new compounds with cytotoxic activities. Locally sourced plants, HPLC fractionation of “hits” into 96 fractions for bioassay, and chemical interrogation of biologically active wells can reduce the time taken to isolate an active compound to a matter of days. A final somewhat provocative talk by Dr. David J. Newman (Retired Chief, Natural Products Branch, Developmental Therapeutics Program, Division of Cancer Treatment and Diagnosis, National Cancer Institute, Frederick, Maryland) was entitled “Are Natural Products Isolated from Plants, Products of Epiand/or Endophytic Microbes with/within the Host?” This was coauthored with Dr. Gordon M. Cragg (also Retired Chief, Natural Products Branch, Developmental Therapeutics Program, Division of Cancer Treatment and Diagnosis National Cancer Institute, Frederick, Maryland). It was posited in this presentation that there is increasing evidence that many plant secondary metabolites, including homoharringtonine, are actually produced, at least in part, by micro-organisms that are associated with a given plant of origin. As a result of the highly informative talks presented, attendees at the symposium came away with a strong impression of both how plant-derived compounds were investigated in the recent past to become important cancer chemotherapeutic agents and also their potential for future discoveries of this type. PDF versions of the slides presented for most of the talks have been deposited on the Web site of the American Society of Pharmacognosy at http://www.pharmacognosy.us/workshps/. In addition to his work on plant-derived anticancer agents, Dr. Powell was Associate Editor for the Journal of Natural Products from 1991 to 2013, with his late wife, Rosemary, working as his editorial assistant for this same period of time. As Symposium Chairs, we wish to congratulate and thank Richard Powell for all of his outstanding past scientific and editorial contributions.

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symposium in honor of Richard G. Powell was held on Monday, July 27, 2015, at the Annual Meeting of the American Society of Pharmacognosy, Copper Mountain, Colorado. Dr. Powell is an Honorary Editor and former Associate Editor of the Journal of Natural Products and retired Research Leader, National Center for Agricultural Utilization Research (NCAUR), USDA, Peoria, Illinois. While working in Peoria, Dr. Powell and his former colleagues were involved in projects done in collaboration with the U.S. National Cancer Institute to discover anticancer agents isolated from plants. Homoharringtonine, a compound resulting from this collaboration, was characterized for the first time in Peoria and reported in 1970.1 It was eventually approved as omacetaxine mepesuccinate by the U.S. FDA as an antileukemic agent in 2012.2 Dr. Powell worked on the isolation and structure elucidation of other potential anticancer agents from plants, inclusive of the taxane diterpenoid cephalomannine,3 and also collaborated on biological and mechanistic investigations.4 Initially, the audience was provided with a short introductory talk by the honoree, entitled “Historical Aspects of Antitumor Agents from Plants, Including Homoharringtonine (Omacetaxine Mepesuccinate, Synribo)”. One point that came through clearly from this talk was that in the late 1960s and early 1970s it would sometimes take months for the return of biological test data used to guide the isolation procedure for a given bioactive plant constituent under study. The three subsequent symposium talks were given by well-known authorities in the field of natural products anticancer drug discovery. Dr. David G. I. Kingston (University Distinguished Professor, Department of Chemistry and Director, Virginia Tech Center for Drug Discovery, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, Virginia) discussed the “Development of Taxol® as an Anticancer Drug”. He delineated a very informative series of events that led to the development of Taxol (generic name, paclitaxel) as an anticancer agent and also conveyed updated information on the chemistry of this compound and its interaction with tubulin. Dr. Susan L. Mooberry (Professor of Pharmacology and Co-leader of Experimental and Developmental Therapeutics, Cancer Therapy and Research Center, University of Texas Health Science Center © XXXX American Chemical Society and American Society of Pharmacognosy

Susan Band Horwitz Albert Einstein College of Medicine

A. Douglas Kinghorn



The Ohio State University

AUTHOR INFORMATION

Notes

Views expressed in this editorial are those of the authors and not necessarily the views of the ACS.



REFERENCES

(1) Powell, R. G.; Weisleder, D.; Smith, C. R., Jr.; Rohwedder, W. K. Tetrahedron Lett. 1970, 11, 815−818. (2) Kantarjian, H. M.; O’Brien, S.; Cortes, J. Clin. Lymphoma Myeloma Leuk. 2013, 13, 530−533.

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DOI: 10.1021/acs.jnatprod.5b00856 J. Nat. Prod. XXXX, XXX, XXX−XXX

Journal of Natural Products

Editorial

(3) Powell, R. G.; Miller, R. W.; Smith, C. R., Jr. J. Chem. Soc., Chem. Commun. 1979, 102−104. (4) Parness, J.; Kingston, D. G. I.; Powell, R. G.; Harracksingh, C.; Horwitz, S. B. Biochem. Biophys. Res. Commun. 1982, 105, 1082− 1089.

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DOI: 10.1021/acs.jnatprod.5b00856 J. Nat. Prod. XXXX, XXX, XXX−XXX