Tuesday, October 31, 2006

New HIV drug?

From New Scientist (this may need subscription):
"As an ethnobotanist working with the traditional healers of Samoa in the 1980s, Paul Alan Cox learned of a potion that he described in his field notebook as a treatment for "acute viral illness". It turns out that the active ingredient, prostratin, is a potent anti-HIV drug, at least in the lab. Now nearing clinical trials, prostratin works unlike any other HIV drug, by coaxing hidden virus out of immune cells. This is no tale of bio-piracy, though. Quite the opposite: pioneering agreements brokered by Cox will ensure that proceeds from the drug go back to the government of Samoa and to the village where Cox first encountered the drug's source. Prostratin is just the start, he tells Brian Vastag: next he hopes to find plant treatments for diseases of the mind."
More about Cox here
and here
See here for a picture of mamala tree leaves and the story of the agreement between Samoa and UC at Berkeley.

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