Plants in the service of human health

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The purpose of this program is to convene a "state of the art" scientific symposium entitled "Plants in the Service of Human Health: The Continuing Search for New Plant-based Therapies" to highlight the achievements of the NIH-funded Centers for Botanical Dietary Supplement Research and the International Cooperative Biodiversity Group projects funded by the NIH Fogarty International Center. The focus of this symposium will be on new research tools and technologies used to promote the study of plants and botanicals and their biological activities that may lead toward new therapies. The Symposium will be held at the facilities of the Chicago Botanic Garden, Chicago, Illinois, on June 4, 2007, as the central event of the 48th Annual Meeting of the Society for Economic Botany (June 4-8, 2007). The Symposium will be given to an audience anticipated to number approximately 250, from a wide range of disciplines related to plant science. Through discussions among the symposium participants and audience the project will promote scientific multi- disciplinary collaboration, exchange of ideas and communication among the groups that will facilitate the application of new methodologies, tools and technologies toward the investigation of plants and botanicals and their biological activities toward new therapies, as well as facilitate new cross-disciplinary research initiatives in these fields. We plan to publish proceedings of the Symposium as a set of peer-reviewed manuscripts in a prominent journal in the field of natural products research. Both the NIH-funded Centers for Botanical Dietary Supplement Research, which scientifically evaluate herbal therapies, and the International Cooperative Biodiversity Group projects funded by the NIH Fogarty International Center, which attempt to discover new prescription drugs from plants, are striving to develop and standardize effective therapies based on plants. No previous forum has brought the two programs together, and there has been little scientific exchange between the two programs. The proposed symposium will allow a unique interaction that may bring about advances in both programs, optimizing and enhancing their ability to deliver plant-based therapies for human health.