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The tropical rain forests have become an important focus in the search for new drugs from natural sources, especially from plants. This volume aims to promote a better understanding between scientists and institutions located in the developed and developing countries, in their efforts to search for new medicinal agents from the plants of these forests. The papers have been contributed by scientists and researchers from both developed and developing countries worldwide, and cover issues relevant to biodiversity prospecting activities. Such issues include rules and regulations on the collection of genetic materials for biological testing; logistical and technical challenges to be faced; sharing the benefits of discovery; patent protection for the discovery of potentially useful drug candidates; intellectual property rights; and indigenous property rights. The volume will be invaluable in achieving more fruitful collaborative efforts between scientists from different countries and different institutional affiliations, in their search for new drugs from tropical forest plants.

Napralert, a database of the natural products literature, contains information concerning the ethnomedical, botanical, chemical and experimental uses of natural products. The availability of these four classes of information in a relational datastructure allows the database to correlate any one type of data with another. This ability is very useful in the justification of ethnomedical claims to experimental results, dereplication of preliminary experimental results and of general utility in the drug discovery processes.