Harvesting the power of plants

In a little vial in a lab at Rutgers University is a substance that may be one of the most powerful anti-inflammatory agents ever discovered.

Simply called 006, it could be the next Vioxx — without the deadly side effects — and a hope for African lowland gorillas dying in captivity.

And Avon thinks it will make a darn good skin cream.

Double-zero-six was not made in the lab. It was extracted from Aframomum melegueta, a member of the ginger-plant family found only in the swampy lowlands of West Africa, from Sierra Leone to Liberia.

It is one of dozens of beneficial plant extracts discovered by the Rutgers-based Global Institute for BioExploration (GIBEX), an international consortium of scientists partnering with some of the most botanically diverse countries in the world.

What is revolutionary about GIBEX, claims institute director Ilya Raskin, is that instead of taking plants out of a host country, consortium scientists teach locals how to find and exploit "green gold" for themselves.

Bioprospecting is not new; a 2005 U.N. report concluded 62 percent of all cancer drugs were created from plants. The key ingredient in the breast-cancer drug Taxol is taken from the bark of the yew tree, and the kidney-transplant drug Rapamune comes from Easter Island soil.

For more than a decade, drug companies have prowled the globe for the next billion-dollar, plant-based drug. But somewhere along the line, prospecting crossed over into piracy, and plant-rich countries such as Brazil and India virtually shut their doors to outside researchers.

Too many of the explorations were ethically dubious and financially disastrous. There had to be a better way, and the scientists at Rutgers — and their partner school, the University of Illinois — think they found it.

"For years, the standard was bio-imperialism, with outsiders coming and taking away immensely valuable plants with little or no advantage for the host country," said Raskin, a noted biochemist and Rutgers professor. "We decided it was time to change the paradigm."

According to Rutgers ecologist Lena Struwe, who returned recently from a GIBEX mission in the cloud forest of Ecuador: "We show the locals how to discover that their shamans knew what they were talking about.

"The cloud forest has incredible biodiversity, but it was being clear-cut because they didn't have any other local economy. We could show them how to identify valuable plants, which can produce a better and more sustainable economy," Struwe said.

Starting with the "Stans"

The GIBEX program started in 2003 with a $4 million grant from the National Institutes of Health and matching contributions from Rutgers and the University of Illinois. The first target was Central Asia in the former Soviet republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.

The "Stans" were chosen because they are among the most inland countries of the world and have some of the most extreme climates. From a research perspective, stressed plants are good for bioprospecting because they are chemically more complex.

Also, the Stans were relatively unexplored and Russian-born Raskin had ties to the scientific community there.

The launch was successful. They discovered several plant compounds including a powerful metabolic stimulant, two anti-depressants and an anti-inflammatory.

But the Stans experiment was marred by political upheaval and jealousies. As GIBEX grew, and world opinion about bioprospecting changed, the organization adopted a new strategy in later ventures.

Now the key to the GIBEX approach is simplicity. Teaching locals how to screen their plants in the bush means that expensive laboratory equipment is out of the question, so the GIBEX team went back to basics.

First, the team asked locals to identify any plants that their parents or grandparents used to treat disease.

To find out if the plant has any desirable compounds, the chemicals must be extracted. In the Rutgers lab, it is done with a $20,000 extractor. Rutgers doctoral student Georgie Fear figured out how to make a portable extractor with a $35 high-speed grinding tool, adapted with a special blade made of five cents' worth of metal. It can be charged in a truck.

As for tests, it seems you can tell an astonishing amount about plant chemistry armed solely with a syringe, white paper, some screens, saliva and a few parasitic worms.

Instead of the single-chemical assays done in labs, the GIBEX staff devised a series of tests to determine if a plant could be effective against a host of diseases including HIV, bacterial, protozoan or fungal infections, malaria, diabetes and autoimmune diseases.

In less than a week in Ecuador, "we found antifungals, antimicrobials and antibacterials. We empowered local scientists and laborers and gave them a reason to save their ecology," Struwe said. "This is exciting stuff."

GIBEX is now partnered with 15 countries in South America, Africa and Asia, plus New Zealand. Promising extractions are brought back to the universities for more refined testing and development.

The universities maintain a comprehensive biodiversity database, develop potential markets for plant compounds and partner in licensing agreements. The host countries retain the intellectual property rights to the plant compounds.

Which brings us back to Aframomum, the gorillas and Avon.

Helping gorillas

Early in his research on Aframomum, Raskin discovered the plant was a potent source of gingerols, which are chemically similar to other anti-inflammatory compounds.

Word of that discovery reached primate experts, who had become increasingly concerned about the mortality rate among gorillas in captivity.

There are several species of gorilla, but back at a time when zoos still captured gorillas in the wild — as compared with breeding in captivity — the Western lowland was the most populous in Africa. It became the zoo species of choice, said Tom Meehan, chief veterinarian at Chicago's Brookfield Zoo and veterinary adviser for the Species Survival Plan for the Western lowland gorilla.

"These gorillas used to be in pretty good shape in the wild, but habitat loss and diseases such as Ebola have really taken a toll," Meehan said. The species was placed on the critically endangered list last year.

The hope for the species was zoos, but a disturbing pattern emerged over the past several years. Of the 95 gorillas that died during 1995-2007, 40 percent overall and 70 percent over age 30 died of heart disease, a condition rarely found among gorillas in the wild.

The primary killer was a condition known as fibrosing cardiomyopathy, in which healthy heart muscle turns into fibrous bands unable to pump blood. A group of vets, zoo nutritionists, cardiologists and pathologists formed the Gorilla Health Project to try to figure out what happened.

In humans, fibrosing cardiomyopathy is caused by inflammation. The gorilla study group was excited to find out that in the wild, a primary food source for Western lowland gorillas is Aframomum, known for its powerful anti-inflammatory properties.

No African plants are fed to animals in American zoos. The answer seemed obvious, until pathologists discovered that swelling didn't cause the heart problems in the gorillas.

Unexplained lesions were the culprit, Meehan said, "so we don't see how an anti-inflammatory plant is going to help at this point."

Not so fast, say the GIBEX folks. Further study on Aframomum found that the plant has multiple anti-disease compounds, including one that appears to work on antibiotic-resistant Staphyloccus.

So Aframomum is back on the table in connection with the gorillas, but what about Avon?

The cosmetics company was intrigued by Aframomum's ability to reduce swelling and aching joints when applied to the skin. It also "boosts the cellular renewal of skin, making it an ideal natural active in our skin-care products," said Robert Kalafsky, vice president for Avon research and development.

Aframomum was introduced in Avon Solutions Hydra-Radiance Moisturizing Day Lotion SPF 15 and Moisturizing Night Cream last year.