Two New Mexican scientists are determined to find a natural cure for cancer.
The National Institutes of Health commissioned Tim Lowrey and Wim Steelant to research the effects of two plants - Ligusticum porteri, or "Osha," and Anemopsis californicai, or "Yerba Mansa" -- which New Mexicans have traditionally used to treat illnesses.
"They've been used by the Native Americans and Hispanic populations for centuries, not necessarily for cancer, but against other diseases such as colds," said Lowrey, who is a botanist and biology professor at UNM.
"The goal of this study is to find naturally occurring active compounds in plants against cancer and bacteria," he said.
Lowrey said he's been collecting specimens of the two medicinal plants from sites around the state since last summer, amassing several kilograms, before sending them to Steelant at New Mexico Tech.
"I collect them, dry them and then seal them and send them to Dr. Steelant, and then he will do the extractions of the chemical compounds," Lowrey said. "He will test them against human cancer cells and then see if they actually kill the cancer cells. If they do, they will be selected for further study."
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Lowrey traveled throughout the state to collect his specimens so that he wouldn't remove too many plants from any particular area, which could harm the ecosystem and put the plant population in jeopardy.
"We don't want to wipe out the entire population if these things prove important," Lowrey said.
Yerba Mansa is found in wetlands, so Lowrey traveled near Los Lunas, Bernardo and the Bosque, and he collected the Osha in mountain ranges, including the Sandias and the Sangre de Cristos, where it is predominately found.
Steelant is the principal investigator in the National Institutes of Health project and has also been working with the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine.
"In the end, you have to find one little molecule, and that's the hard part," Steelant said. "What we want to do is extract the active ingredients, so you end up with a sort of tea."
Steelant likened the isolation of a single molecule, the active ingredient in the medicinal plant, to "finding a needle in a haystack."
He said pharmaceutical companies have recently focused on modifying existing molecules to be more efficient instead of researching new possibilities.
"They want direct results," Steelant said. "They don't have the patience to go back to nature."
Steelant said Leo Guerra, his associate at Tech, has been helpful in the project becuase he is an American Indian medicine man who has used the two herbs frequently on his patients.
"We tried to mimic the way he used those plants," Steelant said. "We have to look at the way that (American Indians) use it in order to proceed to the next step."
Gregory Cajete, director of American Indian Studies at UNM, said he is familiar with the plants' medicinal uses and that the project could be a success.
"Osha and Yerba Mansa were plants that were commonly used for a wide variety of ailments," he said. "They have a lot of qualities that work with boosting your immune system. As a result of that, we've utilized both plants in wide variety of contexts for probably thousands of years."
However, Cajete said healing doesn't come from isolating particular active molecules but from the cultural and religious practices based around the medicinal herb. He said medicine can be approached in two ways and reach different results in each case.
"In one way, you use everything you know and understand, which is that social, religious context, and the other is reductionist-oriented, reducing it just to that one or two molecules," he said.
