NATURAL ANTIMUTAGENIC AGENTS

Following a brief review of recent discoveries in the field of natural antimutagenic and tumor chemopreventive agents, contemporary findings in the author's laboratories employing the direct acting mutagen, eth yl methanesulfonate, in modified Ames tests and eukaryotic murine FM3A mammary tumor cells modified to be subject to thymidine-less death ar e described to illustrate the underlying principles. The EMS studies a re illustrated with the isolation of the novel antimutagen, plicatin B , from the medicinal plants, Psoralea juncaea and P. plicata. The FM3A studies are carried out with extracts of Styrax asiatica, a plant pre viously studied extensively with the EMS system. The FM3A findings clo sely parallel the earlier work with EMS showing that the responsible a gents, cinnamic acid, cinnamoyl ricinoleate and cinnamoyl cinnamate ar e effective both in prokaryotic and eukaryotic tests and that the new FM3A assay system has useful properties for screening and assay of nov el antimutagenic agents.