Post by mefousue on Nov 27, 2006 9:19:31 GMT -5
This is the type of plant we cut down for the gorillas at the sanctuary. They rip the stalk, eat the pith and sometimes the leaves. Whatever remains they make a nest with for sleeping.
It smells quite nice to me, the leaves are like cotton and the pith doesn't taste too bad. We'll use the ginger root in some meals cooked down to add flavor.
Gorilla Staple Adds Spice to New Drugs
By Cheryl Lyn Dybas
Special to The Washington Post
Monday, November 27, 2006; Page A08
NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. -- A clear vial filled with amber fluid rests on
scientist Ilya Raskin's desk, glinting in the autumn sunlight streaming through his
office window. The container, a small glass bottle with a plain white
screw-top, contains a substance Raskin calls 006. "Double-zero-six" is potentially
more precious than the rarest topaz.
Raskin is a biochemist at Rutgers University's Biotechnology Center. The
golden liquid on his desk may prove to be one of the most powerful
anti-inflammatory substances ever discovered. "It contains a derivative of a plant known
as grains of paradise, or Aframomum melegueta, a member of the ginger family,"
said Raskin. The compound works in a similar way to the well-known
anti-inflammatory drugs Vioxx, Celebrex and Bextra but, it is hoped, without their
side effects, said Raskin and other scientists.
Aframomum is not easy to come by. It grows in just one place: the
vine-choked swampy lowlands of West Africa's Grain Coast. Stretching from Sherbro
Island in Sierra Leone to Cape Palmas in Liberia, this rain-drenched, humid land
is named for its abundant grains of paradise.
Outside Africa, Aframomum is usually available only as a hard-to-find spice.
For their experiments, Raskin and colleagues hire African botanists to
inspect the seeds and ship them to the United States.
Raskin first became interested in Aframomum during an international effort
to search for medicines from plants. "Aframomum contains compounds called
gingerols, which are chemically similar to other anti-inflammatory compounds," he
said. "That's what initially drew our attention to the plant, and was
confirmed in the lab."
Plant-derived drugs are hardly new: aspirin, for example, is a synthetic
version of a natural substance found in willow bark, and the heart medication
digitalis is made from the foxglove plant.
Humans may not be the only creatures that use Aframomum to treat
inflammation and infection, said primatologist Michael Huffman of Kyoto University's
Primate Research Institute in Japan. He said studies have shown that Western
lowland gorillas in Africa prefer Aframomum shoots and seedpods to other foods.
In zoos, the absence of Aframomum and other African plants in the feed given
to captive Western lowland gorillas may be a factor in an unexplained heart
condition many have developed, say Ellen Dierenfeld, staff nutritionist of
the St. Louis Zoo, and Melissa Remis, a primatologist at Purdue University.
"Western lowland gorillas in captivity aren't fed African plants,"
Dierenfeld said. "We need to look very closely at this aspect of their health to see
if there's a link among diet, inflammation or infection, and heart disease."
For humans afflicted with inflammatory diseases, scientists are taking their
cue from native African healers, who have used Aframomum for centuries to
treat infections of all kinds, said biochemist Christopher Okunji of the
National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
"In the West African culture in which I was raised," Okunji said, "Aframomum
is an important part of daily life. For example, when a visitor arrives at
someone's home, no discussion begins until all partake of Aframomum seeds.
People far back in African history likely knew that Aframomum was a good thing
to eat if you didn't want to get sick."
Okunji's research has shown that one species of Aframomum has significant
antimicrobial activity in laboratory tests. In a published study involving cell
cultures, Okunji showed that the plant works against the microbe responsible
for a hard-to-treat infection, methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus.
MRSA, which has reached epidemic levels in some hospitals and other confined
places, is impervious to every penicillin-like antibiotic now available.
Okunji has conducted research at Raskin's lab, where lucky visitors may
leave with their own thimble-size jar of bronze liquid and a pinch of Aframomum
seeds, from which "006" is derived.
"If you spread a thin layer of this substance on a paper-cut or an aching
joint," said scientist Neb Ilic of Phytomedics Inc., a pharmaceutical company in
Jamesburg, N.J., "there's a warm sensation for a brief time, then the
inflammation disappears."
Ilic is a visiting scientist at Rutgers, which has patents pending on
Aframomum-related discoveries. Rutgers has licensed those rights to Phytomedics,
Raskin said.
Phytomedics has licensed cosmetic-only rights to Avon Products Inc. to
manufacture skin-care products that contain Aframomum, said Tolo Fridlender,
president of Phytomedics.
Avon scientist Xiaochun Luo said the cosmetic's development is based on what
Luo calls Aframomum's superior ability to counteract skin irritation. Avon
expects to release the products next spring or summer.
Phytomedics is not alone in its quest to market Aframomum. Another group of
researchers, headed by Kenneth Kornman, president and chief scientific officer
of Interleukin Genetics Inc., in Waltham, Mass., also has a patent pending
on Aframomum applications. Kornman and partners in Interleukin Genetics
conducted a clinical trial in humans, completed last summer, of Aframomum's ability
to inhibit a component of the immune system known as cytokine modulators.
Cytokine modulators regulate inflammatory responses, which Interleukin
Genetics attempted to slow down in its clinical trial. Based on early results,
which the company is just beginning to review, said Kornman, "Aframomum might
successfully be used to treat diseases with inflammation as their hallmarks,
like cardiovascular conditions, arthritis, osteoporosis and Alzheimer's
disease."
The clinical trial included blood tests for markers of inflammation, such as
C-reactive protein, in volunteers treated with Aframomum or substances from
other plants -- blueberry, blackberry and rose hips.
"Although it's too early to say for sure which plant had the most effect,
inflammatory markers in people in the Aframomum group responded differently,"
said Kornman.
In earlier tests in cell cultures, Aframomum "at a very low concentration
significantly inhibited the production of C-reactive protein," he said.
If Aframomum lives up to the current hopes for it, Okunji said, "we will owe
a great debt to early native healers in Africa" -- and the wild lowland
gorillas whose habits they perhaps observed and mimicked.
It smells quite nice to me, the leaves are like cotton and the pith doesn't taste too bad. We'll use the ginger root in some meals cooked down to add flavor.
Gorilla Staple Adds Spice to New Drugs
By Cheryl Lyn Dybas
Special to The Washington Post
Monday, November 27, 2006; Page A08
NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. -- A clear vial filled with amber fluid rests on
scientist Ilya Raskin's desk, glinting in the autumn sunlight streaming through his
office window. The container, a small glass bottle with a plain white
screw-top, contains a substance Raskin calls 006. "Double-zero-six" is potentially
more precious than the rarest topaz.
Raskin is a biochemist at Rutgers University's Biotechnology Center. The
golden liquid on his desk may prove to be one of the most powerful
anti-inflammatory substances ever discovered. "It contains a derivative of a plant known
as grains of paradise, or Aframomum melegueta, a member of the ginger family,"
said Raskin. The compound works in a similar way to the well-known
anti-inflammatory drugs Vioxx, Celebrex and Bextra but, it is hoped, without their
side effects, said Raskin and other scientists.
Aframomum is not easy to come by. It grows in just one place: the
vine-choked swampy lowlands of West Africa's Grain Coast. Stretching from Sherbro
Island in Sierra Leone to Cape Palmas in Liberia, this rain-drenched, humid land
is named for its abundant grains of paradise.
Outside Africa, Aframomum is usually available only as a hard-to-find spice.
For their experiments, Raskin and colleagues hire African botanists to
inspect the seeds and ship them to the United States.
Raskin first became interested in Aframomum during an international effort
to search for medicines from plants. "Aframomum contains compounds called
gingerols, which are chemically similar to other anti-inflammatory compounds," he
said. "That's what initially drew our attention to the plant, and was
confirmed in the lab."
Plant-derived drugs are hardly new: aspirin, for example, is a synthetic
version of a natural substance found in willow bark, and the heart medication
digitalis is made from the foxglove plant.
Humans may not be the only creatures that use Aframomum to treat
inflammation and infection, said primatologist Michael Huffman of Kyoto University's
Primate Research Institute in Japan. He said studies have shown that Western
lowland gorillas in Africa prefer Aframomum shoots and seedpods to other foods.
In zoos, the absence of Aframomum and other African plants in the feed given
to captive Western lowland gorillas may be a factor in an unexplained heart
condition many have developed, say Ellen Dierenfeld, staff nutritionist of
the St. Louis Zoo, and Melissa Remis, a primatologist at Purdue University.
"Western lowland gorillas in captivity aren't fed African plants,"
Dierenfeld said. "We need to look very closely at this aspect of their health to see
if there's a link among diet, inflammation or infection, and heart disease."
For humans afflicted with inflammatory diseases, scientists are taking their
cue from native African healers, who have used Aframomum for centuries to
treat infections of all kinds, said biochemist Christopher Okunji of the
National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
"In the West African culture in which I was raised," Okunji said, "Aframomum
is an important part of daily life. For example, when a visitor arrives at
someone's home, no discussion begins until all partake of Aframomum seeds.
People far back in African history likely knew that Aframomum was a good thing
to eat if you didn't want to get sick."
Okunji's research has shown that one species of Aframomum has significant
antimicrobial activity in laboratory tests. In a published study involving cell
cultures, Okunji showed that the plant works against the microbe responsible
for a hard-to-treat infection, methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus.
MRSA, which has reached epidemic levels in some hospitals and other confined
places, is impervious to every penicillin-like antibiotic now available.
Okunji has conducted research at Raskin's lab, where lucky visitors may
leave with their own thimble-size jar of bronze liquid and a pinch of Aframomum
seeds, from which "006" is derived.
"If you spread a thin layer of this substance on a paper-cut or an aching
joint," said scientist Neb Ilic of Phytomedics Inc., a pharmaceutical company in
Jamesburg, N.J., "there's a warm sensation for a brief time, then the
inflammation disappears."
Ilic is a visiting scientist at Rutgers, which has patents pending on
Aframomum-related discoveries. Rutgers has licensed those rights to Phytomedics,
Raskin said.
Phytomedics has licensed cosmetic-only rights to Avon Products Inc. to
manufacture skin-care products that contain Aframomum, said Tolo Fridlender,
president of Phytomedics.
Avon scientist Xiaochun Luo said the cosmetic's development is based on what
Luo calls Aframomum's superior ability to counteract skin irritation. Avon
expects to release the products next spring or summer.
Phytomedics is not alone in its quest to market Aframomum. Another group of
researchers, headed by Kenneth Kornman, president and chief scientific officer
of Interleukin Genetics Inc., in Waltham, Mass., also has a patent pending
on Aframomum applications. Kornman and partners in Interleukin Genetics
conducted a clinical trial in humans, completed last summer, of Aframomum's ability
to inhibit a component of the immune system known as cytokine modulators.
Cytokine modulators regulate inflammatory responses, which Interleukin
Genetics attempted to slow down in its clinical trial. Based on early results,
which the company is just beginning to review, said Kornman, "Aframomum might
successfully be used to treat diseases with inflammation as their hallmarks,
like cardiovascular conditions, arthritis, osteoporosis and Alzheimer's
disease."
The clinical trial included blood tests for markers of inflammation, such as
C-reactive protein, in volunteers treated with Aframomum or substances from
other plants -- blueberry, blackberry and rose hips.
"Although it's too early to say for sure which plant had the most effect,
inflammatory markers in people in the Aframomum group responded differently,"
said Kornman.
In earlier tests in cell cultures, Aframomum "at a very low concentration
significantly inhibited the production of C-reactive protein," he said.
If Aframomum lives up to the current hopes for it, Okunji said, "we will owe
a great debt to early native healers in Africa" -- and the wild lowland
gorillas whose habits they perhaps observed and mimicked.