Mining Of Ancient Herbal Text Leads To Potential New Anti-bacterial Drug
Science Daily
— A unique Mayo
Clinic collaboration has revived the healing wisdom of Pacific Island
cultures by testing a therapeutic plant extract described in a 17th century
Dutch herbal text for its anti-bacterial properties. Early results show that
extracts from the Atun tree effectively control bacteria that can cause
diarrhea, as claimed by naturalist Georg Eberhard Rumpf, circa 1650. He
documented his traditional healing methods in the book Ambonese Herbal.
The Mayo Clinic-led
team's report appears in the Dec. 23 edition of The British Medical Journal.
In their report, Mayo Clinic researchers demonstrate the feasibility of
using sophisticated data mining techniques on historical texts to identify
new drugs.
Significance
of the Mayo Clinic Research
The study provides a
creative new model for drug discovery. It integrates nontraditional, ancient
medical information with advanced technologies to identify promising natural
products to investigate as drugs for new and better therapies.
"Natural products
are invaluable sources of healing agents -- consider, for example, that
aspirin derived originally from willow bark, and the molecular basis of the
anti-cancer chemotherapeutic agent TaxolTM was derived from the bark of the
Pacific yew tree. So it's not so far-fetched to think that the contributions
of an ancient text and insights from traditional medicine really may impact
modern public health," explains Brent Bauer, M.D., director of the Mayo
Clinic Complementary and Integrative Medicine Program.
For thousands of
years, people around the world have lived intimately with botanical healing
agents and evolved effective healing traditions. "Our work shows just how
much we can learn from them. But to make the most of what is fast becoming
lost knowledge, we have to respect, preserve and work with traditional
healing cultures," adds Eric Buenz, Ph.D., researcher for Minnesota-based
BioSciential, LLC.
Ancient Text
Rumpf referred to
himself as Rumphius, in the Latinized scientific manner of the day. Rumphius
was a German-born naturalist who worked for the Dutch East Indies Company.
His book is an account of the herbal healing traditions on the Indonesian
island of Ambon. Rumphius' description of Atun kernels' therapeutic
properties is what modern medicine calls "antimotility agents," they stop
diarrhea. Writes Rumphius: "... these same kernels ... will halt all kinds
of diarrhea, but very suddenly, forcefully and powerfully, so that one
should use them with care in dysentery cases, because that illness or
affliction should not be halted too quickly; and some considered this
medicament a great secret, and relied on it completely."
Authors
Dr. Buenz was
formerly an investigator in Mayo Clinic's Complementary and Integrative
Medicine Program, and is now a private researcher with Minnesota-based
BioSciential, LLC. Working with Dr. Bauer, Dr. Buenz went to the Independent
State of Samoa in January 2005 and accompanied a shamanistic healer to Atun
tree groves. The Atun leaves and nuts Dr. Buenz picked were brought back to
Minnesota and analyzed in Mayo Clinic laboratories.
Global
involvement
Scientists and
others in the Mayo Clinic collaboration included:
- in the
Independent State of Samoa, shamanistic healer.
- in
Rochester, Minn., a Mayo Clinic neuroscientist, a physician, laboratory
analysts and a bioinformatics text-mining expert, who oversaw the Mayo
Vocabulary Server concept-indexing application to closely examine the text
for detailed and relevant information.
- in Kalaheo,
Hawaii, ethnobotanists (persons who study the plant lore of a race or
people) at the Institute for Ethnomedicine, National Tropical Botanical
Gardens, to validate the correct botanical specimens.
- in Boston,
Mass., experts in technology to digitize the text so names, symptoms or
ailments associated with a given plant could be extracted.
- in New York,
N.Y., a botanist at the New York Botanical Gardens to reconcile ancient
plant names with modern plant names.
- in Chicago,
Ill., experts using a natural products database to compare the therapeutic
plants identified by Rumphius with modern botanical healing agents in use.
Plant names found in Rumphius' text -- but not found in the database --
were considered promising leads to investigate.
- in Amherst,
Mass., a professor of Germanic languages who translated the work written
in Dutch and Latin by Rumpf (1627--1702).
Collaboration and Support
Authors also include
Kristi Frank and Charles Howe, Ph.D, at Mayo Clinic. Other collaborators
include botanists Holly Johnson and Gaugau Tavana, Institute for
Ethnomedicine, National Tropical Botanical Gardens, Kalaheo, Hawaii; and E.M.
Beekman, Ph.D., University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Funding was provided
by Mayo Clinic.
Note: This story
has been adapted from a news release issued by Mayo Clinic.
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