While effective treatments exist for acute lymphocytic leukemia (ALL), particularly in the case of children, and for chronic mylogenous leukemia (CML), more efficacious treatments for other forms of acute and chronic forms of the disease are still needed. The National Cancer Institute has tested over 90,000 extracts of terrestrial plants and marine plants and invertebrates in its human cancer one-dose/60-cell-line prescreen, and the results for plants and marine organisms meeting criteria established for activity against selected leukemia cell lines are presented. Taxonomic data are limited to family and genus in the case of plants, and phylum for marine organisms, and those groups of organisms exhibiting significant activity (so-called "hot" families and genera) are discussed. The "hot" terrestrial plant families Myrsinaceae and Sapindaceae have not been studied to any extent and appear to merit special attention, although leukemia cell line selectivity is also noted for other families.

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During the decade 1987-1996, the Developmental Therapeutics Program (DTP) of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) provided infrastructure support for both intramural and extramural anti-HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) drug discovery research and development. This retrospective review describes some of the anti-HIV lead discovery and development that took place under DTP auspices or which was substantially facilitated by resources made available through the DTP. Examples highlighted include leads identified through the initial screening of pure natural product derived compounds and those derived from bioassay-guided fractionation of crude natural product extracts, and these are classified according to the mechanism of action targeting the critical steps within the replication cycle of HIV.

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