The New York Times, January 16, 2007
17th-Century Remedy; 21st-Century Potency
By Nicholas Bakalar
A 252-year-old botany text may seem an unlikely place to prospect for potential new
medical treatments, but a team of scholars have done just that, and the effort may
lead to the development of an important new antibiotic.
[PHOTO: Eric J. Buenz/Mayo Clinic. OLD MEDICINE In Samoa, atun tree leaves were
prepared for analysis.]
The researchers are a diverse group: a physician, a neuroscientist, three botanists, a
graduate student in molecular biology and an expert in Germanic languages.
The book they studied, "The Ambonese Herbal," was written by Georg Eberhard
Rumpf, now known by the Latinized name Rumphius, an employee of the Dutch East
India Company who spent most of his life documenting the properties and uses of the
plants of Ambon, an island in Indonesia. The book was published in seven volumes
from 1741 to 1755, nearly a half-century after Rumphius' death.
In some ways, it is a wonder that the work survived at all. In 1670, at the age of 42,
Rumphius went blind. In 1687, his still unpublished manuscript and all of his
illustrations were destroyed in a fire that swept through the European quarter of
Ambon. Undaunted, he dictated a new version and commissioned artists to draw new
illustrations.
[PHOTO: Wangensteen Historical Library, University of Minnesota]
Fortunately, the second time around he kept a copy of the manuscript. The original
was lost when the ship carrying it back to the Netherlands was sunk by a French
naval squadron. Still unfazed, Rumphius continued his work, finishing the last volume
shortly before his death in 1702.
Eric J. Buenz, an ethnobotanist at the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine, led the team
that wrote a paper about the text, published in the Dec. 23 issue of the British
medical journal BMJ. First, Dr. Buenz had Eric M. Beekman, an emeritus professor of
Germanic languages at the University of Massachusetts, translate the text into
English from the original Dutch and Latin! .
Then the researchers used a computer program to seek out possible medicinal
compounds by picking out plant names, plant parts and their synonyms and varied
spellings and connecting them with symptoms or disorders. They found a promising
combination in Rumphius' description of the curative properties of Atuna racemosa,
the atun tree (Atong in Ambonese -red).
The seeds of the tree, Rumphius wrote, "will halt all kinds of diarrhea, but very
suddenly, forcefully and powerfully, so that one should use them with care in
dysentery cases, because that illness or affliction should not be halted too quickly:
and some considered this medicament a great secret, and relied on it completely."
To Dr. Buenz, this sounded very much like the action of a drug on the bacterial flora of
the intestines.
So the researchers organized an expedition to Samoa, where Dr. Buenz had done
previous work with traditional healers and where the atun tree also grows. There was
some initial difficulty in collecting specimens, because the tree, whose wood is highly
resistant to rotting, is widely used on the island as building material.
"We had to go pretty far back in the bush to find a grove of trees that was still
growing," Dr. Buenz said.
Specimens finally in hand, the scientists began the laboratory work. They preserved
the leaves and kernels in ethanol, and then prepared alcohol extracts of them. They
added various concentrations of the potion to samples of four common bacteria:
Staphylococcus aureus, Enterococcus faecalis, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and
Escherichia coli. The extracts showed antibacterial effect specific to S. aureus and E.
coli. T! he extract made from the kernels was even more effective than that made from
the leaves.
Could a new antibiotic be developed from the plant? Dr. Buenz is hopeful, noting that
preliminary data have shown that the extract is effective against methicillin-resistant
Staphylococcus aureus, or M.R.S.A., a common and sometimes fatal hospital
infection resistant to many antibiotics.
M.R.S.A. infections acquired outside the hospital usually cause pimples, boils or
other skin lesions.
Dr. Brent A. Bauer, an associate professor of medicine at the Mayo Clinic and a
co-author of the paper, said the work showed that "we were able to validate what
many people already believe, which is that some of this indigenous knowledge that
has come down from generation to generation is actually valid."
Dr. Bauer added, "It's humbling."
Copyright © 2006 The New York Times Company.
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