Samoa endorses use of
plant to fight AIDS
It would earn 50% in royalties if
its plants can fight the ailment
A Kauai-based botanist who studies medicinal uses of plants has helped broker an agreement between the University of California at Berkeley and the Samoan government to isolate the gene for a promising anti-AIDS drug.
Under the deal announced Thursday, any royalties from the sale of a gene-derived drug developed by UC-Berkeley from the gene sequence of the indigenous Samoan mamala tree will be shared with the people of Samoa.
It supports Samoa's assertion of national sovereignty over the gene sequence of Prostratin, a drug extracted from the bark of the mamala tree (Homolanthus nutans).
The drug is being studied by scientists around the world because of its potential to force the AIDS virus out of hibernation in the body's immune cells and into the line of fire of anti-AIDS drugs now in use.
The pact helps fulfill the promise that botanist Paul Alan Cox made to Samoans 20 years ago when he was studying medicinal plants with native healers in villages there. He said he vowed to help them benefit from the native wisdom they were passing on to him.
Cox, who now is director of the Institute for Ethnobotany at the National Tropical Botanical Garden on Kauai, searched for possible cures for breast cancer in Samoa in the 1980s but instead came upon a healer's cure for hepatitis that used the mamala tree bark.
Later testing by the National Cancer Institute found that Prostratin, isolated from the mamala bark, had potential as an anti-AIDS therapy.
"Prostratin is Samoa's gift to the world," said Samoan Minister of Trade Joseph Keil. "We are pleased to accept the University of California as a full partner in the effort to isolate the Prostratin genes."
Despite Prostratin's promise as an anti-AIDS drug, its supply is limited since the drug has to be extracted from the mamala tree bark and stemwood. Researchers in the laboratory of Jay Keasling, UC-Berkeley professor of chemical engineering, plan to clone the genes from the tree that naturally produces Prostratin and insert them into bacteria to make microbial factories for Prostratin.
"The best part for me is to see how ancient wisdom from healing plants has been coupled with cutting-edge technology in a way that will benefit not only Samoa and UC-Berkeley, but the entire world," Cox said in an e-mail from London, where he announced the Samoa agreement at the Natural History Museum on Thursday, simultaneously with announcements in Samoa and Berkeley.
A previous royalty agreement on Prostratin was signed in 2001 by the prime minister of Samoa and the AIDS ReSearch Alliance, which is sponsoring clinical trials of Prostratin as an anti-AIDS therapy. That agreement would return 20 percent of any commercial profits arising from the plant-derived compound to the people of Samoa.
"This new agreement gives them 50 percent of the profits from the supply as well as the use side," Cox said.
Samoa's 50 percent share is allocated among the government, villages and the families of healers who first taught Cox how to use the plant.
"This may be the first time that indigenous people have extended their national sovereignty over a gene sequence," Cox said. "It is appropriate since the discovery of the antiviral properties of Prostratin was based on traditional Samoan plant medicine."
