Objectif
Cameroon enjoys a rich biota including a plethora of medicinal plants, which have traditionally been used for hundreds of
years to treat various ailments, and form the basis of the country’s primary healthcare system. Medicinal plants of the
genera Fagara (F: Rutaceae), and Hannoa and Pierreodendron (F: Simaroubaceae) belong to the Cameroonian flora, and
are used by the local people to treat malaria, cancer, rheumatism, bacterial infections, pain, inflammations, typhoid, skin
infection and other serious disorders. Previous studies carried out on certain species of these genera afforded various
phytochemicals (quassinoids, furoquinoleine, acridones, cathinone alcaloids, triterpenoids and steroids) and revealed
interesting pharmacological properties (cytotoxicity, antiplasmadial activities). This project proposes to employ a
combination of chemical fingerprinting-based dereplication, assay-guided fractionation and reversed-phase preparative high
performance chromatographic methods to identify potential anticancer and antimalarial lead compounds from plants of the
genera mentioned above, selected on the basis of ethnobotanical information as well as literature data. The structures of
the isolated compounds will be elucidated by spectroscopic means (UV, IR, MS, NMR and X-ray). Structural modification to
increase activity of compounds will be carried out applying modern semisynthetic approaches in order to establish structureactivity
relationships. Total synthesis will also be carried out to increase to quantity of the lead compounds. Suitable in vitro
bioassays, relevant to cytotoxicity, antimalarial and toxicity determination will be utilised to aid isolation processes as well as
for the determination of bioactive potencies of the isolated lead compounds. The main objective is to discover and develop
bioactive natural products and their analogues as clinical trial candidates.
Champ scientifique
Appel à propositions
FP7-PEOPLE-2013-IIF
Voir d’autres projets de cet appel
Régime de financement
MC-IIFR - International incoming fellowships (Return phase)Coordinateur
00237 Douala
Cameroun