IRVINE : Researchers Get $507,750 Study Grant
Two UC Irvine researchers have won a major grant from the National Institutes of Health to explore the therapeutic properties of tropical plants from Africa and South America.
With the $507,750 grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, biologist Eloy Rodriguez and chemist Fillmore Freeman hope to develop compounds to combat fungus diseases, parasitic ailments and viruses, perhaps even those responsible for AIDS and herpes.
“I’ll be going to Africa and the Amazon and looking at the exotic uses of plants that have medicinal value both by animals and people,” said Rodriguez, who in earlier research discovered that apes and other animals eat particular plants for their curative properties.
Rodriguez will return with plant specimens to determine their individual chemistry and work with Freeman, who would synthesize the active compounds.
One plant already under study is a Tanzanian variety known as aspilia , which produces thiarubrine-A, a sulfur compound thought to be useful in treatment of tumors, fungi and other infectious and parasitic diseases. Freeman, an expert in the synthesis of medicinal sulfur compounds in garlic and onions, said they have now been able to isolate the same elements in other plants found in North and South America.
“Some of the structures in the plants isolated will have to be modified to enhance their therapeutic value,” said Freeman, 55, a Laguna Beach resident who has been a UCI professor since 1973. “Once this is done, we hope to generate structures with increased antiviral and antibacterial elements, and decreased toxicity.”
Rodriguez, a Latino, and Freeman, who is black, hope to recruit minoritystudents for their research team to attract more minorities into science and mathematics.
“It’s very interesting research, but it also has a very interesting cultural component,” said Rodriguez, who has raised funds to support his science education programs targeted at minority children throughout Orange County.
“African-American students and Latino students might want to go to some of these places to learn about these people who have developed these remedies,” the 44-year-old Irvine resident added.
The grant itself is unusual in that the National Institutes of Health in recent years has funded only a handful of new research proposals, Freeman said. He recently returned to UCI from a stint with the National Science Foundation, the other federal agency that supports major research in the United States.
It is also unusual for a major federal agency to fund research about the value of plants that are often dismissed as folk remedies lacking real medicinal value, Rodriguez said.
“Whenever they talk about herbs, it’s dismissed as an ‘old wives’ tale,’ ” Rodriguez said. “It’s time we start to look at (some) of the most important contributions women have made to science and pharmacology. Women were the real pioneers.”
One reason the NIH considered their research promising enough to fund is that there are now very few compounds known to combat viruses, especially the type known to cause AIDS and herpes, both men said.
“I tell Eloy we are so close to being famous,” Freeman joked. “But we really are actually on the verge of doing something exciting and important that will help humanity.”
