Martin Henry
In the shadow of the reappearance of malaria and a resurgence of leptospirosis, Dr. Henry Lowe and his U.S.-based colleague, Dr. Joseph Bryant, have announced prospects for cancer drugs from two Jamaican plants.
Lowe has been a life-long 'herbs man'. The two-time Common-wealth Scholar in Pharmaceutical and Medicinal Chemistry has published on Jamaica's ethno-medicine, the folk medicinal use of local plants and potential applications in the formal health care system, on aloe vera, and, on ganja. With more than a dozen books to his credit, the entrepreneurial Lowe has simply created his own publishing house, Pelican Publishers.
My wife, a nurse practitioner in the formal health care system, like Lowe with a commitment to exploring alternative therapies, has been participating in some exciting work in the use of aloe vera in wound care with quite positive results. I have been encouraging them to document and publish.
The dreadful data
Cancer has taken on epidemic proportions. Joseph Bryant rolled out the dreadful data that "cancer continues to represent the largest cause of mortality in the world and claims over six million lives a year." That is six times more than malaria and three times more than AIDS.
More and more people are acknowledging the environment, lifestyle and germ links to cancer. This complex of diseases can never be beaten simply by newer and better drugs. Lowe himself is very heavily involved with wellness [as opposed to cure] through his business venture, the well-named Eden Gardens, a wellness and lifestyle centre, through the Environmental Health Foundation for which he is executive chairman, and through several of his research interests. He has authored with medical doctor Winston Davidson and nurse and public health specialist Violet Wright The Wellness Handbook: Your Guide to Healthy Living.
But new and better drugs are going to be necessary in the fight against cancer. And many drugs are derived from natural sources, as Dr. Lowe reminded his press conference audience.
Jamaica is blessed with an exceptional number of endemic species present nowhere else on the planet. Many of these may have medicinal properties. The UWI Mona, to which Lowe is now connected as senior research fellow, has a strong international track record in natural products chemistry. Important anti-glaucoma and anti-asthma drugs from ganja have been commercialised from research based on folk knowledge by the famous Manley West and Albert Lockhart team to which Lowe contributed.
Promising strategy
Joseph Bryant says, "An extremely promising strategy for cancer and chronic inflammatory disease has been the use of natural plant extracts." But "a major problem with the use of these natural extracts is the lack of scientific scrutiny of their therapeutic potential, biological property and safety." What he and Lowe have done is to test crude extracts from two Jamaican plants, unnamed for the protection of intellectual property rights, to see if they would kill cancer cells without harming normal cells, as well as for their anti-inflammatory properties.
"Strong preliminary results both in vitro [in glassware] and in vivo [in living organism] demonstrated strong positive results against five different histogenic tumors and an inflammatory disease animal model," Bryant reports in the language of science.
Lowe and Bryant ran their bush extracts against the plant-derived anti-cancer drug on the market, Taxol, with superior results.
The trans-national team has "started to analyze the extracts chemically in the attempt to isolate the specific compound(s) with the properties to kill cancer cells and produce anti-inflammatory effect."
At this proud moment for Jamaican science, the conundrum facing the Lowe-Bryant research team is having a good idea/product with no money and 'losing' a good idea/product to big money. With a high-powered patent attorney, Royal Craig, working with them and Lowe's own business savvy, we hope the team will search for, and will find, win-win solutions, in level-headed, hard-nosed commercial fashion.
Martin Henry is a communications specialist.
