The proposed database-PHYTOMED-will give pharmaceutical, medical, and herbal-products researchers a comprehensive source of information on the use of plants in traditional medicine, in particular in traditional Chinese herbal medicine, and will help transfer existing knowledge to modern medicine. It will also help traditional-medicine practitioners select appropriate natural-product drugs. This database will identify plants to be screened for potential use in cancer therapy; channels also will be established to obtain plant samples.During this Phase I project, procedures will be developed for obtaining source documents and extracting information, computer programs will be written for capturing and searching the database and for producing special compendia; 300 to 500 representative plant and drug records will be created; and the pilot system will be demonstrated on an IBM PC. During Phase II, the system will be moved to a large service-bureau mainframe computer, where it will be Beta-tested by interested users; data-entry validation tables will be developed; and up to 10,000 records will be created. Later in Phase II, the database will be moved to a commercial vendor.National Cancer Institute (NCI)
