Australian Pharmacology?

[Plantsoma]

I was wondering if anyone has links/texts related to Pharmacological Studies of plants in Australia.

I have one excellent text released by the CSIRO : Plants For Medicines. This text deals with Alkaloid surveys on plants, concentrating on QLD and PNG rainforest areas.

I have been having a lot of trouble researching more on this topic as far as the internet is concerned - there doesn't seem to be much listed online of such surveys within Australia.

I'm also curious of the alkaloid: Psychotridine, which was derived from stem bark of Psychotria beccariodes (PNG). The only other info i have on this alkaloid is that it has been shown to be cytotoxic and to inhibit blood platelet aggregation. I also have a scan of the structure of this alkaloid if anyone was interested email or PM me.

?

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[Guest mandragora]

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Edited April 17, 2007 by mandragora

[Torsten]

this CSIRO book is the pinnacle of australian pharmacology research, which gives you some idea of just how pityful it is. Since then there has been quite a bit of non-systematic research, but it is usually published as articles in overseas journals.

[Fractalhead]

There is a group at Griffith University called (i think) the 'Natural Products Discovery Group' or something. They are probably the single biggest pharmacological explorers of the native australian biome (mainly qld stuff) I remember seeing that they had discovered beta-carboline alkaloids in some marine organism (a sponge of some sort i think). Might be worth sniffing around their website for leads.

[theobromos]

Off the top of my head I would say that psychotridine is probably an emetine-type alkaloid, toxic and cumulative. If you need to vomit and evacuate your bowels and not necessarily survive, these are your alkaloids.