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The
development of cancer treatment pharmaceuticals from natural products
involves many steps and procedures. Most important is the use of in
vitro cultures of normal and cancerous cells that are used to test
chemical extracts for potency in destroying the virulent cancer cells
while being benign to normal healthy tissues.
The Cell Biology Division is dedicated to this phase of the testing of potential cancer pharmaceuticals. The use of these procedures significantly avoids the need for the use of animal testing. Florida is a unique region due to its variation in climate, from warm temperature to subtropical or tropical, which is an important aspect of the great diversity of the Florida flora for preservation of many native species. In our continuous search for bioactive compounds from plants we are investigating the antiproliferate and cytotoxic activities of natural products on brine shrimps, human leukemia, human colon carcinoma, human hepatoblastoma and human breast cancer cell lines. These facilities are housed in our Tallahassee laboratory.
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