The New York Botanical Garden is an oasis of green for visitors escaping the city’s concrete canyons. For scientists, it’s a research center where a prehistoric plant may hold clues to a treatment for Parkinson’s disease.
Researchers at the Bronx garden’s International Plant Science Center, now aided by a new $23 million laboratory, are assessing the therapeutic potential of trees, flowers and herbs by exploring their genetic makeup. From aspirin to Taxol, medicines have been derived from chemical compounds in plants.
One of the center’s scientists is studying cycads, plants dating to the days of dinosaurs that may hold the key to the human brain malfunctions that trigger the tremors, slowness and poor balance associated with Parkinson’s, which afflicts more than 6 million people. Another is investigating a Western Pacific pepper plant that may yield a nonaddictive alternative to sedatives such as Valium.
“The science at the garden has evolved into genomics and molecular-based research,” said William C. Steere Jr., former chief executive officer of New York-based Pfizer, the world’s largest drugmaker, which helped finance the center’s new lab.
“It’s a natural extension of the kinds of things that Pfizer has done in terms of science,” said Steere, 70, who led a $100 million fund-raising campaign to expand the science center. Pfizer’s Chantix, a drug approved in May to help people quit smoking, was derived from cytisine, a substance found in plants in the legume family, including the laburnum tree and the yellow Scotch Broom flower, he said.
Genomics, Graduate Studies
The 115-year-old Botanical Garden, set on 250 acres (100 hectares) in the northernmost of the city’s five boroughs, opened the Pfizer Plant Research Laboratory in May. The 28,000-square-foot (2,600-square-meter) facility, which tripled the garden’s research capabilities, houses the genomics effort and serves as the base for the garden’s graduate studies program.
“We want to know what builds plants,” said Amy Litt, director of the genomics program, where researchers map plant DNA to chart the evolutionary differences between related flora. “It’s entirely possible that we could come up with something that someone might use.”
The garden’s buildings and grounds are owned by New York City. Mayor Michael Bloomberg, founder and majority owner of Bloomberg News parent Bloomberg LP, is an ex-officio member of the institution’s board.
Plant Remedies
“In the developing world, three out of four people rely on remedies made directly from plants,” the garden says on its Web site. “Where prescription drugs are the norm, a large percentage of medicines contain at least one plant-derived compound.”
Pharmaceutical research and biotechnology companies spent a record $51.3 billion on research and investment last year, according to the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, a Washington-based industry group.
While drugmakers typically rely on synthetic substances that allow them to alter compounds to make treatments safer or more effective, “plants and natural sources provide starter materials,” said Marie Vodicka, senior director for biologics and biotechnology at the organization.
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New York-based Bristol-Myers Squibb Co.’s Taxol cancer drug was isolated from the bark of the Pacific yew tree. London-based GlaxoSmithKline Plc’s ovarian cancer treatment Hycamtin is made from camptotechin, the extract from the Chinese camptotheca tree, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved its use in June for treating cervical cancer.
At Pfizer, plant-based study is a source of inquiry, although it is a small part of the company’s research, said Steere, who is vice chairman of the botanical garden’s board.
Herbarium Endowment
Steere and his wife helped endow the William and Lynda Steere Herbarium, the Western Hemisphere’s largest collection of dried plants, which has more than 7 million specimens, according to the garden’s Web site. Steere’s late father, botanist William Steere Sr., headed the garden for 14 years.
Inside the facility, Dennis Stevenson, vice president for laboratory research, studies cycads and the link between the amino acid BMAA, or B-methylamino-L-alanine, and neurological disorders including Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and Lou Gehrig’s disease. The cycads are the only plants that function normally with the compound, which destroys nerve endings.
BMAA excites neurons by mimicking the effect of glutamate, a chemical affecting electrical signals between cells. The results are similar to effects of too little of the substance dopamine, as seen in Parkinson’s.
It’s possible that by identifying how the plants are able to function normally and repair damage done by the chemical, the botanical research may spur a similar treatment for human conditions, said Stevenson, 63.
“If we know what genes control that, one notion is that stem cells could be used to generate that defense,” he says.
Belize, Micronesia
Another garden scientist, Michael J. Balick, vice president and chairman of botanical science research, is compiling a survey of therapeutically useful plants in Belize and Micronesia.
One promising plant is the kava, a member of the pepper family traditionally cultivated by Pacific Islanders for use as a social and ceremonial drink. The plant “may prove as effective in managing menopausal anxiety and pain as its pharmaceutical counterparts, like Valium — but without the addictive side effects,” according to the garden’s Web site.
“A lot of medicine has come out of a plant base,” Steere said. “You have to look at the molecular base of the plant to find that.”