For centuries, the Cherokee Indians looked to the rich forests of Western North Carolina as their medicine cabinet, harvesting native plants to treat a variety of ailments.
Now, scientists want to untangle the chemical makeup of those traditional remedies in search of new medicines that could help cancer patients. Their findings could also provide an economic cure for a region that has suffered the loss of thousands of manufacturing jobs in the past decade.
“A third of the U.S. population takes some kind of natural supplement. There’s all this anecdotal evidence of healing, but there’s been no real science into why they work and how they interact,” explained Cheryl McMurry, director of the western regional office of the North Carolina Biotechnology Center. McMurry will oversee the Bent Creek Institute, formerly called the International Center for Natural Biotechnology and Integrative Medicine.
“The Bent Creek Institute is an economic development tool to create new companies and new jobs. The research is the deepest component of the project that could transform this region,” McMurry said.
In a little stone cottage near the N.C. Arboretum, the Bent Creek Institute is already getting attention. The N.C. Biotechnology Center awarded Jeff Schmitt, the center’s resident scientist, a $75,000 grant to study bethroot, a species of trillium, along with other traditional Cherokee botanicals, as a possible treatment for cancer.
Rather than break a plant down to isolate a single potent chemical to be synthesized as a new pharmaceutical, Schmitt wants to look at how the many compounds in a plant interact with the human body in treating a disease or ailment.
“To our knowledge, there is no other life science center in the world that is unraveling traditional botanicals looking for combination therapies,” Schmitt said.
Medical cocktails have worked wonders in situations where single drugs have been ineffective — as in the treatment of HIV. Schmitt pointed to the success of artemisia, a shrub common in Chinese traditional medicine, which has been used to combat malaria in southern Africa. The active ingredients are hard to synthesize into a single drug but are effective when taken as a traditional herbal tea, he said.
Bent Creek Institute will also house the nation’s first germplasm, or seed collection for medicinal plants. McMurry said the Institute has hired Joe-Ann McCoy, a leading botanist who studied the medicinal properties of black cohosh, another Appalachian botanical, during her graduate work at Clemson University. Buncombe County commissioners have contributed $150,000 toward the germplasm project, and the N.C. Biotechnology Center has pitched in $100,000.
Too much stress can make you impotent or erection click here to find out more tadalafil tablets prices problems. Even though viagra 25mg sometimes it becomes difficult to start those conversations, you can think about them as being good for your love relationship. Kamagra Soft Tabs additionally accessible in 100mg power as enhanced melt pills you could look here viagra prescription with chewable arrangements which dissolve when set underneath your tongue. In general, a dosage dissolves in the blood within 40 minutes and show its effectiveness for about 6 hours after starting the activity of the medicine. cialis discount online Private companies have expressed interest in Bent Creek’s work. Ion Technologies in Research Triangle Park has donated a DNA sequencer, and Targacept in Winston-Salem has given a $200,000 nuclear magnetic resonance machine to help Schmitt delve into the chemical secrets of these native plants.
Schmitt is also a principal investigator on a $300,000 research project with Wake Forest University, examining the health benefits of the muscadine grape.
For now, Bent Creek Institute has about $1.5 million in funding for sponsored research, McMurry said.
George Briggs, executive director of the Arboretum and chair of the western advisory committee on biotechnology, sees Bent Creek Institute as playing a key research role within the Arboretum. Plans include building a new 20,000-square-foot lab in the next few years to house the institute’s work.
Using the tools of biotechnology to delve into traditional plants without genetically altering them could give Western North Carolina a niche in a growing market for natural medicines and products, estimated at $55 billion in the U.S. and $200 billion worldwide, according to Briggs.
“We want to position ourselves as the Napa Valley of natural products,” Briggs said.
trillium erectum
Also known as bethroot, birthwort and wake robin.
Traditional uses: Easing childbirth, treating bleeding. Leaves, boiled in lard, were often used as a poultice for skin diseases, tumors and ulcers.
Scientific study: Jeff Schmitt of the Bent Creek Institute has received $75,000 from the N.C. Biotechnology Center to analyze the plant’s chemical compounds as a treatment for cancer.