Phytochemical and ethnobotanical discovery of endemic American plants

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The purpose of this research is to study traditionally used plants scientifically in order to understand the nature of the phytochemical substances that makes them active. There is some urgency due to the rapidly disappearing knowledge of indigenous healers.We have a longstanding collaboration with Maya curanderos in Central America and Cree/Inuit healers in Northern Canada with whom we will work to document medicinal plant use for infections and neurodegenerative diseases, then test them in relevent lab assays. We are particularly interested in determining if antiinfective plants can inhibit bacterial biofilm formation, an emerging problem in medicine and industry for which we have few solutions. Similarly, we will assess if some traditionally used plants have the capacity to prevent neurodegerneration in standardized lab assays. The active plants and other plants that we previously identified as active in epilepsy and anxiety assays will be extracted for the purpose of isolation and identification of the active principles. Some of the more important plants that belong to the important blueberry-cranberry genus, Vaccinium, or the tropical pepper genus, Piper are being thoroughly investigated for phytochemical substances by advanced chemical instrumentation methods, NMR metabolomics and HPLC/MS/MS. The program will train 5 graduate students, contribute to our understanding of ethnobotany and potentially lead to new treatments and useful natural health products.