Tanshen, the rhizome of Salvia miltiorrhiza Bunge, has been used in Chinese traditional medicine (TCM) for multiple therapeutic remedies. The major constituents of Tanshen include water-soluble phenolic acids and lipophilic tanshinones. Phenolic acids possess antioxidant and anticoagulant activities, whereas tanshinones show antibacterial, antioxidant, and antineoplastic activities. This review will focus on recent developments concerning the chemical constituents of Tanshen and their biological activities. These chemical and biological studies continue to increase our understanding about a scientific basis for the traditional clinical use of Tanshen and can also contribute to the development of new drug candidates. Recently, in the author's laboratory, a new compound, neo-tanshinlactone, was discovered to have potent selective antibreast cancer activity. This compound might serve as a lead for developing promising antibreast cancer clinical trials candidates.

Numerous plant-derived compounds have been evaluated for inhibitory effects against HIV replication, and some coumarins have been found to inhibit different stages in the HIV replication cycle. This review article describes recent progress in the discovery, structure modification, and structure-activity relationship studies of potent anti-HIV coumarin derivatives. A dicamphanoyl-khellactone (DCK) analog, which was discovered and developed in our laboratory, and calanolide A are currently in preclinical studies and clinical trials, respectively.

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The clerodane diterpenoids are a widespread class of secondary metabolites and have been found in several hundreds of plant species from various families and in organisms from other taxonomic groups. These substances have attracted interest in recent years due to their notable biological activities, particularly insect antifeedant properties. In addition, the major active clerodanes of Salvia divinorum can be used as novel opioid receptor probes, allowing greater insight into opioid receptor-mediated phenomena, as well as opening additional areas for chemical investigation. This article provides extensive coverage of naturally occurring clerodane diterpenes discovered from 1990 until 2015, and follows up on the 1992 review by Merritt and Ley in this same journal. The distribution, chemotaxonomic significance, chemical structures, and biological activities of clerodane diterpenes are summarized. In the cases where sufficient information is available, structure activity relationship (SAR) correlations and mode of action of active clerodanes have been presented.