New medicines from nature's armamentarium

Nature frequently unleashes a barrage of new and frightening diseases against humans – such as HIV, severe acquired respiratory syndrome, Ebola virus and avian flu recently – in addition to the seemingly ever-present scourges such as malaria and tuberculosis. Fortunately, nature also provides the wherewithal to help conquer the diseases that it sets loose. All that is needed is the human ingenuity to discover, develop and apply the solutions in an optimal fashion. Participants at the 9th Max Tishler Memorial Symposium (Tokyo, July 2005) were told about several new advances in the search for new anti-infective drugs derived from natural sources and were able to learn how one of the most effective drugs ever, ivermectin, made its way through what was, at the time, uncharted territory and how precedents were set at nearly every stage to form a model for all subsequent public–private partnerships.