Richard E. Moore

Professor

University of Hawaii at Manoa
Department of Chemistry
2545 The Mall, Honolulu,
HI 96822-2275

Phone: (808) 956-7232
Fax: (808) 956-5908
Email: moore@gold.chem.hawaii.edu

Richard Moore received his B.S. and M.S. degrees from the University of San Francisco in 1957 and 1959 and his Ph.D. from the University of California (Berkeley) in 1963. He joined the faculty at the University of Hawaii in 1966 where his research interests are in natural products chemistry.

     Dr. Moore's research is concerned mainly with the isolation, structure determination, and biosynthesis of naturally-occurring compounds, in particular those associated with microalgae and certain marine organisms. One project is briefly described below.

    New Anticancer Drugs. To date industry has not exploited microalgae for new pharmaceuticals, mainly for economic reasons. We have found that blue-green algae are excellent sources of new cytotoxins, fungicides, and viricides. Extracts of 6% of the >1000 cultured blue-green algae tested to date, for example, show cytotoxicity toward the KB (a human nasopharyngeal carcinoma) cell line at <20 mg/mL.

    Presently there are about 50 drugs in clinical use for the treatment of cancer, but none of these drugs are broadly effective against the slow-growing solid tumors that account for 85% of the cancer deaths in the U.S. In the last two years, we have been working collaboratively with T. Corbett and F. Valeriote at the Wayne State University School of Medicine to screen extracts of cultured blue-green algae for solid tumor selective cytotoxicity. The extract of Scytonema mirabile (Dillwyn) Bornet (strain BY- 8-1), an alga collected on Mt. Tantalus, Oahu, has been examined in detail and two of the four classes of cytotoxic compounds that are found in this organism exhibit solid tumor selectivity in vitro, viz. the scytophycins and the tantazoles. Tolytoxin, first isolated from field-collected Tolypothrix conglutinata var. colorata Ghose, is the major scytophycin-type compound and tantazole B is the major tantazole in S. mirabile BY-8-1.

Representative Publications

1. "Puwainaphycin C, a Cardioactive Cyclic Peptide from the Blue-Green Alga Anabaena BQ-16-1. Use of Two- Dimensional 13C-13C and 13C-13N Correlation Spectroscopy in Sequencing and the Amino Acid Units," R.E. Moore, V. Bornemann, W.P. Niemczura, J.M. Gregson, J.L. Chen, T.R. Norton, G.M.L. Patterson, and G.L. Helms, J. Am. Chem. Soc. 111, 6128-6132 (1989).
2. "Anatoxin-a(s), a Potent Anticholinesterase from Anabaena flos-aquae," S. Matsunaga, R.E. Moore, W.P. Niemczura, and W.W. Carmichael, J. Am. Chem. Soc., 111, 8021-8023 (1989).
3. "Isonitriles from the Blue-Green Alga Scytonema mirabile," S. Carmeli, R.E. Moore, G.M.L. Patterson, Y. Mori, and M. Suzuki, J. Org. Chem., 55, 4431-4438 (1990).
4. "[7.7]Paracyclophanes from Blue-Geen Algae," B.S. Moore, J.-L. Chen, R.E. Moore, G.M.L. Patterson, L. Brinen, Y. Kato, and J. Clardy, J. Am. Chem. Soc., 112, 4061-4063 (1990).