Local Drug Discovery Industry Could Conserve Rainforests

SALT LAKE CITY, Utah, October 10, 2003 (ENS) - The Earth's dwindling tropical rainforests might be better protected if the pharmaceutical industry establishes laboratories in rainforest countries and hires local researchers to seek new medicines there, as demonstrated by a pilot project developed by a husband and wife team of biology professors at the University of Utah working with colleagues in Panama. The project yielded chemicals that are active against the parasite that causes leishmaniasis, a deadly disease caused by parasites transmitted by sand fly bites.

“Until now, efforts to find drugs in the rainforest haven’t really led to rainforest conservation,” says Tom Kursar, an associate professor of biology, who led the five year, $3 million study with his wife, biology professor Phyllis Coley. “But we have developed a novel approach that provides a direct link between looking for drugs and promoting conservation and economic development in biodiversity-rich countries.”

University of Utah biologist Tom Kusar in Panama. (Photo courtesy UofU)

“Rainforests are disappearing at a terrifying rate," Coley said. "Searching for drugs in the rainforests of developing countries might be one solution. In our research, not only are we finding potential pharmaceuticals, but we are contributing to conservation of the forests.”

To keep rainforest nations from converting their forested lands to logging and ranching, nondestructive industries such as bioprospecting, ecotourism and watershed protection must provide greater economic benefits.

“The challenge, therefore, is to provide immediate and guaranteed benefits even if royalties are not forthcoming,” the biologists wrote.

“A solution becomes apparent upon recognizing that the research and development pyramid underlying the successful development of a drug is based on many basic but essential discoveries, a tiny fraction of which result in a product.”

Worldwide, drug companies invest between $27 billion to $43 billion each year in research and development. Kursar and Coley suggest that about one-third of these funds could be redirected toward research in rainforest countries such as Panama.

University of Utah biologist Phyllis Coley (Photo courtesy UofU)

“By conducting all of the research in Panama, we circumvent the issue of uncertain royalties and provide immediate and lasting benefits in the form of training, employment, technology transfer and infrastructure development,” the biologists wrote.

Their pilot project in Panama demonstrates how the system could work. Over the past five years, the project established six laboratories in Panama and employed local citizens - 10 senior scientists, 57 paid research assistants and 12 student volunteers. Twenty Panamanian students earned bachelors degrees in the process, a dozen earned or worked on master’s degrees, and one started work on a doctorate.

As a result of this work, the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and Panamanian scientists have obtained a provisional patent for three alkaloid chemicals extracted from local plants.

Tests by Panamanian scientists Luz Romero and Luis Cubilla-Rios showed the chemicals were active against the parasite that causes leishmaniasis, a potentially fatal disease caused by parasites transmitted by sand fly bites.

The chemicals now are being tested in Panama on mice to determine if they are safe, and tests are just starting to determine if they are effective against leishmaniasis in animals.

The project produced benefits for Panama by establishing bioprospecting, chemical extraction and laboratory operations using local students as well as scientists who taught at local universities but who previously lacked funding to conduct research.

“Despite the many drugs obtained from plants in the past, success rates could be greatly improved by incorporating ecological knowledge,” the researchers wrote.

The scientists collected leaves throughout Panama’s protected wild lands. They prepared extracts and tested the extracts on breast, lung and nervous system cancer cells; on the AIDS virus; and also on organisms that cause three tropical diseases: malaria, leishmaniasis, and Chagas’ disease, a parasitic infection that kills 50,000 people each year.

Plant extracts were considered highly active if they killed or inhibited the growth of the cancerous or infected cells without killing other cells.

The research made great strides when it focused on how plants make chemicals to defend themselves against insects.

Panamanian botanists Blanca Arauz and Rafa Aizprua collect plant samples in the rainforest. (Photo by Tom Kursar)

Young leaves contain more active chemicals than older leaves, even from the same plant. The researchers tested 18 woody plant species, and found 10 of the species contained toxic chemicals called alkaloids that were present only in young leaves, not old leaves. Only three species had alkaloids in old leaves and not young leaves.

Plants that live in the shade are more likely to contain active chemicals than sun-loving plants. It takes longer for a shade tolerant plant to grow new leaves to replace those eaten by insects, the researchers found, so the shade tolerant plants develop stronger chemical defenses than plants that live in sunlight and can replace leaves more quickly.

The report, published in the current issue of the Ecological Society of America journal "Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment," was written by Coley, Kursar and 13 other scientists, most from the University of Panama.

Funds for the work came from the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation and U.S. Department of Agriculture through the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Balboa, Panama, where Kursar and Coley also hold appointments and spend a few months each year.

In a commentary published alongside the study, Jeffrey McNeeley, chief scientist of the IUCN-World Conservation Union, pointed out that some bioprospecting efforts have been called “biopiracy,” such as when a drug company made $200 million in profits selling cancer drugs developed from Madagascar’s rosy periwinkle while that country “got nothing.”

McNeeley praised the Panama project led by Coley and Kursar as “an excellent first step” that “shows how to conduct more of the value added bioprospecting research in the source country, and build the technical capacity of local people while doing so.”

The Utah biologists say the number of plant extracts that become drugs is less important than having scientists from Panama find and develop potential drugs.

“You do the work in the host country and you are creating jobs,” Coley says. “The next step is for the country to recognize those jobs depend on the intact rainforest.”

The drug hunting principles tested by Coley and Kursar in Panama were developed during years of earlier work in Africa, Southeast Asia and Panama, “and therefore should be applicable to tropical forests worldwide,” they wrote.