Wired - New Medicine From Old Cure

Reaping New Meds From Old Cures

By Megan Lindow

Story location: http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,61090,00.html

02:00 AM Nov. 08, 2003 PT

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa -- Samson Mvubu's corner of the bustling Faraday Market is crammed with bundles of bark, roots, bulbs and animal parts used to treat all manner of maladies, ranging from madness to coughs and infections.

Mvubu is an "inyanga" -- a traditional herbalist. He spent years learning to treat illnesses using plants found in the fields and forests surrounding his village. Visitors to this market located underneath an urban freeway come to Mvubu for cures from the countryside. Among them are a small but growing number of scientists, who show up armed with notebooks and ask lots of questions.

"The traders here are not happy about them," he says of the scientists. "They just run away with our plants under their arm and they don't come back."

Five years ago, few scientists bothered to visit Mvubu and his fellow healers. Now, however, it seems the world is waking up to the vast untapped potential of biological and indigenous resources. Bioprospecting -- searching nature for plants and animals with commercially useful properties -- is a booming field. Traditional healers like Mvubu, who tend to come from poor, marginalized communities, increasingly are perceived as the ones who might lead scientists to important discoveries.

"Everyone wants access to biodiversity," says Dr. Marthinus Horak, manager of bioprospecting at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, or CSIR, which is sponsored by the South African government.

Indeed, 50 miles away in CSIR laboratories, scientists pore over many of these same substances used by Mvubu and his colleagues, looking to isolate genes and compounds to form the basis of new drugs for obesity, HIV/AIDS, cancer, respiratory ailments and other diseases.

With 24,000 plant species, the biodiversity of this country is almost unparalleled. And with almost 300,000 traditional healers nationwide, local knowledge of plants and their uses is equally abundant. Increasingly, CSIR scientists tap into the knowledge of traditional healers, who have helped to identify hundreds of the plants researchers are studying now.

However, in South Africa -- where at least 70 percent of people rely on traditional remedies, and where newspapers run stories of AIDS patients who swear by "miracle" herbal concoctions -- no major drug has yet been developed.

Dr. Namrita Lall, a botanist at the University of Pretoria, is one of many hoping to change that. Working with a traditional healer, she has found what could be a promising alternative treatment for tuberculosis. She started with the premise that healers used certain plants to treat chest ailments, and wondered if they might be treating cases of TB without even knowing it. When she approached traditional healers and explained what she was trying to do, she says, only one man was willing to help.

"He said I had picked a very difficult thing," she recalls. "He said he sends his patients to the doctor with TB."

Nevertheless, Lall bought samples from the healer's shop and took them back to her laboratory to study. She tested 20 different plants, exposing their extracts to TB bacteria. Eventually, one of the compounds was shown to work on TB-infected mice. Now, she says, the treatment is in the pretrial stage.

The potential rewards of this type of cooperation are great for both scientists and traditional healers, Horak says. But collaboration also raises troubling issues.

Operating in a legal vacuum, researchers and corporations historically have laid claim to indigenous resources without compensating communities or obtaining their consent. Long before issues of traditional knowledge emerged for debate in global arenas like the World Trade Organization, colonial botanists cataloged vast amounts of traditional knowledge, which is now available to anyone, says Rachel Wynberg, a Cape Town researcher on biodiversity issues.

Even now, rich countries have resisted demands from the developing world that traditional knowledge be recognized under international patent laws. And while the 1992 Convention on Biological Diversity recognizes the need for stronger regulatory mechanisms, many developing countries rich in biodiversity have yet to pass their own laws protecting biological and indigenous resources.

Meanwhile, Mvubu at the Faraday Market says he has stopped speaking to scientists because he mistrusts their motives.

In a major breakthrough earlier this year, however, CSIR announced an agreement with the San of the Kalahari Desert to share in the profits of a potential blockbuster weight-loss drug.

In 1996, CSIR scientists discovered and patented appetite-suppressing chemicals found in the succulent desert plant hoodia. For untold years, the San chewed on hoodia to relieve hunger during long hunting trips.

With hoodia, scientists hoped to "put South Africa on the map as a supplier of international drugs," Horak says. The CSIR licensed P57 -- the plant's appetite-suppressing ingredient -- to a British company, Phytopharm, which in turn licensed pharmacological giant Pfizer to further develop and market the drug. When the South African San Council, an indigenous-rights group, got wind of the deal, it fought for the San to share in profits from the drug -- since it was their knowledge that led scientists to the discovery in the first place.

The case sparked an international scandal, but Horak insists that CSIR always intended to recognize the San's contribution.

"We've proven the potential for bioprospecting to translate into benefits to communities," Horak says.

Just how much the San will benefit financially remains to be seen, however. Pfizer recently pulled out of the deal, and any drug that may yet be developed from hoodia is still years away.

Wynberg says she doubts the San or any other indigenous groups ever will see much benefit from bioprospecting, given the projects' complexity.

"Even if hoodia does succeed, it's unique," she says. "One in 10,000 projects may yield some kind of promising lead ... so maybe in South Africa there will be one other."