Special Issue in Honor of Professor James D. McChesney on the Occasion of his 80th Birthday

Dear Colleague,

Dr. James D. McChesney

Higher plants and their products have been used as food, medicine, agrochemicals, food preservatives, flavoring agents, and spices since the dawn of the human civilization. More recently, they have been the sources of important pharmaceuticals to combat a number of diseases. The antimalarial drugs artemisinin and quinine, the anticancer drugs taxol, etoposide, and vinca alkalods, and the sugar-free sweetening agents stevioside and rebaudiosides are good examples of important plant-based drugs and food additives currently on the market. In spite of these and many other successes, there are significant challenges to discovering and developing commercially important natural products from plants. Often, active natural products have complex molecular structures with multiple asymmetric centers, and isolating them from natural sources remains the only economical way of obtaining them in sufficient quantities to carry out development studies. However, due to ecological and environmental reasons, procuring plant materials in large quantities has become quite difficult, and the separation of active constituents from complex mixtures can be challenging. Furthermore, due to undesirable qualities, such as low solubility or poor chemical or metabolic stability, active constituents may be nonviable as commercial products.

Dr. James D. McChesney, who is a firm believer in the tremendous potential of higher plants as sources for drugs, agrochemicals, and food additives, has contributed immensely to overcoming these challenges in order to bring nature-based products to market. His work has focused on searching for plant strains with a high content of active compounds, particularly in plant parts such as leaves so they can be harvested in sustainable manner, as well as micropropagating these strains to mass produce plants with uniform chemical profiles rapidly. Additionally, he has developed practical, efficient, and economical separation methods to isolate active compounds on a large scale and has used chemical modification of active constituents to improve bioavailability and therapeutic index. His research on artemisinin, taxol, galanthamine, podophyllotoxin, and stevia sweet glycosides exemplifies the magnitude of his contributions.  His extensive work on the structural modification of taxol led to the discovery and development of the anticancer agent TPI 287, a third generation taxane analog which is currently undergoing clinical trials.

In addition to his contributions to natural product-based drug development, for more than 40 years, he was involved in the development of 8-aminoquinoline antimalarials, the only group of compounds currently available for the treatment of relapsing malaria. His efforts in this area led to a broader understanding of the mechanism of activity and toxicity of this class of compounds, and resulted in the development of NPC1161B, a drug candidate which is not only active against all stages of the life cycle of plasmodium in humans, but also highly effective in the treatment of leishmaniasis and Pneumocystis pneumonia. This compound is currently undergoing preclinical development.

As a further example of his dedication to advancing natural products research, Dr. McChesney was instrumental in obtaining grant money from the United States Department of Agriculture to establish the National Center for Natural Products Research at the University of Mississippi, a research facility shared with the Natural Products Utilization Research Unit of the Agricultural Research Service of the USDA to carry out discovery and development of natural product-based pharmaceuticals and agrochemicals.

Dr. James D. McChesney was born near Hatfield, a small town in Missouri, in 1939 and completed a BSc in chemical technology from Iowa State University in 1961. In 1964, he received an MA in botany from the University of Indiana, and, in the following year, he received a PhD in organic chemistry from the same institution. Soon after, he joined the Department of Botany and later the School of Pharmacy at the University of Kansas and became a Professor of Botany and Medicinal Chemistry. In 1978, he joined the Department of Pharmacognosy in the School of Pharmacy at The University of Mississippi as the Chair of the department and became the Director of the Research Institute of Pharmaceutical Science in 1986. In 1996, he joined NaPro Bio Therapeutics in Boulder, Colorado as the Vice President of Development. He became the chief scientific officer of Tapestry Pharmaceuticals and then ChromaDex of Boulder, Colorado in 2003. He moved back to his farm home near Etta, Mississippi in 2009 and founded his own companies (Ironstone Separations, Arbor Therapeutics, and Cloaked Therapeutics) to pursue his interest in commercial development of natural products.

Now semi-retired and back at his farm in Oxford, Mississippi, he is pursuing his passion for research in this area, is still involved in the commercial development of natural product-based pharmaceuticals, and participates in research group meetings at the University of Mississippi, where he serves as an adjunct faculty.

Dr. McChesney has had a long, distinguished teaching and research career, has authored more than 225 research publications, and holds more than 60 patents. He is a past president and a fellow of the American Society of Pharmacognosy and a Fellow of the AAAS. He has mentored many graduate students, post-docs, and junior faculty members who hold prominent positions in natural products research establishments in the US and around the world.

We are honored to organize this Special Issue to celebrate Dr. McChesney’s 80th birthday and to dedicate this issue to his enormous contributions to natural products research and development. We welcome manuscripts in the areas of natural product drug discovery, dietary supplements, analytical methodology, synthesis, and agrochemicals from the academic, scientific, and research communities.

Prof. Dr. Muhammad Ilias
Prof. Dr. Dhammika Nanayakkara
Guest Editor

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