Bush Medicines May Yield Drugs To Cure Modern-day Ills
Sydney Morning Herald
Saturday February 25, 1995
High-tech science has turned to traditional bush medicines, used by Aboriginal people for thousands of years, in its search for new drugs for cancer and viral diseases such as AIDS.
Twelve plants still used as bush medicines have been identified for further investigation in a drug-development project involving the Menzies School of Health Research in Darwin and Tiwi people on the Bathurst and Melville islands.
AMRAD Corporation, an Australian drug company funding the project, believes it is the first systematic attempt to develop pharmaceuticals from Aboriginal bush medicines.
Professor David Kemp, deputy director of the Menzies school, said conventional medicine had been slow to learn from Aboriginal cultures.
"It would just be amazing if there weren't some useful things that the Aborigines knew about plants," he said. "Wouldn't we look like fools if we didn't investigate that?" The Tiwi project is part of a broader AMRAD program, costing about $25 million over the next five years, which aims to develop drugs from Australian plants, marine life and microorganisms. The company is establishing high-tech laboratories in Melbourne to screen hundreds of thousands of substances from the Great Barrier Reef, Antarctica, Melbourne's Royal Botanic Gardens and other areas.
Dr Murray Tait, a biochemist and director of AMRAD's natural screening program, said the Tiwi project was the only one involving Aboriginal medicines, but that negotiations with other communities were under way.
He is optimistic the program will lead to new drugs, noting that about one-quarter of all prescription drugs are derived from natural substances.
Plants were a rich source of medicines because of the many chemicals they produced to attract pollinators or to deter predators and infections. "There's a huge history of successful drug discovery in natural sources," he said.
The AMRAD program is part of a world-wide trend towards "bioprospecting" or "getting back to nature" in drug development, says Dr Mark Myerscough, a Menzies researcher who has spent several months on the Tiwi islands studying bush medicines.
Royalties will be paid to the Tiwi islanders if any drugs result from the project.
It is widely known in the area that a concoction made from the shrub Acacia oncinocarpa is used to treat chest infections and fevers. Scabies is treated with preparations made from a shrub, Tephrosia oblongata, or from the morning glory vine. Leaves from the wild passionfruit vine are rubbed on ringworm.
Dr Myerscough said more than 1,000 plant species become extinct around the world each year, of which it could be expected that 30 might yield drugs.
FARMING PHARMACEUTICALS: DRUGS FROM NATURE DRUG USES SOURCE morphine & codeine pain relief, sedative opium poppy aspirin pain relief willow tree taxol anti-cancer Pacific yew treebark cyclosporin transplant patients fungus lovastatin cholesterol-lowering fungus digoxin heart failure foxglove vinblastine anti-cancer rosy periwinkle penicillin antibiotic fungus cefaclor antibiotic fungus scopolamine motion sickness jimson weed
FARMING PHARMACEUTICALS: DRUGS FROM NATURE DRUG USES SOURCE morphine & codeine pain relief, sedative opium poppy aspirin pain relief willow tree taxol anti-cancer Pacific yew treebark cyclosporin transplant patients fungus lovastatin cholesterol-lowering fungus digoxin heart failure foxglove vinblastine anti-cancer rosy periwinkle penicillin antibiotic fungus cefaclor antibiotic fungus scopolamine motion sickness jimson weed
© 1995 Sydney Morning Herald
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