Virginia Tech-led group receives third five-year international biodiversity grant

Abstract

Ten years ago, a Virginia Tech-led team of chemists, conservationists, and botanists began work in Suriname to discover new drugs and to give the country reasons to preserve the biodiversity of its forests. Five years later, in 1998, they were screening two potential anticancer compounds, had discovered five rare plants, and had saved some of the country's tropical forest from wood harvesting. They also expanded their research to Madagascar and have discovered four additional potential anticancer compounds.