Download or read book Drug Development and Conservation of Biodiversity in West and Central Africa written by and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page 24 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The report comprises of projects undertaken by the Bioresources Development and Conservation Programme (BDCP) in pursuant of the objectives of Associate Programs 2 and 5 of the ICBG project entitled Drug Development and Conservation of Biodiversity in West and Central Africa - for Year 2. The accomplishments include training of ethnobotanists, purchase and installation of equipment, and six ethnobotanic surveys which led to the identification of over 120 plants used in traditional medicine for the treatment of malaria, leishmaniasis, viral infections, etc. Plants collected from the ethnobotanical field trips were dereplicated according to a customized protocol. A multi-disciplinary team of experts in botany, chemistry, biology, clinical pharmacology and medical practitioners was used to identify and collect plant species with the greatest potential for biological activity. The collected plants were properly catalogued, voucher specimens obtained, then processed, extracted and tested for biological activity. Extracts have been prepared from some of these samples and submitted for various bioassays including brine shrimp lethality, antifungal bioautography assay, antiviral, antimalarial, antileishmanial, antitrypanosomial, antitrichomonad and cytotoxicity tests. We are also continuing our support for graduate training projects, in phytochemistry, ethnobiology and bioassay screening techniques. The benefit sharing scheme for the ICBG has been fully developed.