Stephanie Henderson and Dr. Gary M. Booth, Integrative Biology
Medicinal plants are the oldest known health-care products in the world (WHO, 1996), and according to the World Health Organization, 80% of the population in Africa still use traditional medicines for primary health care (WHO, 2003). The situation in Ghana is particularly significant. In the Upper Region of Ghana, a population of over 1.2 million, there is one traditional healer to approximately 490 people, as opposed to one biomedical physician to every 66,667 people (Boye and Ampofo, 1987).
In light of these figures, it becomes important to understand the enormous global role that traditional medicine plays in primary health care and the important contribution of herbal medicine to health. Yet, little research has been conducted that studies the specific biological and chemical activity of these potent herbal plants. For example, it is also well documented that only 2% of the plants from the tropical forests have been identified and researched, and that less than one half of one percent of plant species have been extensively studied for their medicinal value (Balick and Cox, 1996).
With this in mind, my research project is intended to determine the cytotoxicity of medicinal plants used extensively by traditional herbal healers in Ghana. I participated for three months this past summer in a medical anthropology field study in Mampong, Ghana, and documented the uses and preparations of several traditional Ashanti medicinal plants. While there, I focused on two healers who regularly used medicinal plants and who had an extensive knowledge of native plants. After interviewing healers and considering available assays in the laboratory, I chose to collect plants that are commonly used by these healers to treat female diseases of the breasts, such as boils and breast cancer.
In addition to collecting medicinal plants with traditional healers, I conducted interviews with several women in the community of Mampong, Ghana about their understanding of breast diseases and the social implications of such illnesses. Curiously, most of the women I interviewed had experienced boils on their breast, even though this fact was not known until a formal interview had begun. I found that there was a strong misconception about the term “breast cancer” and that almost any disease that affected the breast was termed breast cancer. I also learned that there was a strong aversion to seeking hospital treatment, and that most cancer patients who actually made it to one of the two Oncology departments in the country were in such advanced stages of cancer that chemotherapy and radiation were unlikely to prevent mortality.
While in Ghana, I was assisted with identification of the medicinal plants by J. K. Asante and his assistant Alex Annin in the Department of Biological Sciences at K.N.U.S.T. in Kumasi. After returning from Ghana and properly documenting the plant vouchers at the Monte L. Bean Herbarium, I completed plant extractions in methanol and hexane of the approximately twenty different plants and barks collected in the field. Following the lengthy process of chemical extractions, my laboratory team and I began conducting HeLa cell assays on the plant extracts. This procedure involves plating the HeLa cell line in a 96 well plate, drugging the cells with known concentrations of extract, fixing and staining the viable cells in the well, and then measuring the well absorbency in a spectrophotometer. These assays are still being conducted in the laboratory on the 20+ plants, and assays on an epithelial breast cancer cell line, MCF-7, will follow in the early spring of 2006.
Preliminary results show that several crude extracts result in a cancer cell viability of less than 25%, and that a significant number of plants result in a viability of less than 15%. These plant extracts must also be tested against a normal rapidly dividing cell line, 3T3, to control against the extracts attacking only rapidly dividing cells. The assays against HeLa, MCF-7, and 3T3 are the final assays in the project, and statistical analysis will follow.
This research project has faced several complication that have hampered the work and prevented me from taking the research to the dose response and column chromatography stages that I had originally planned. The largest obstacle I have dealt with is gathering a committed team to assist in the work. For example, the extractions alone took two months longer than I expected. In addition, I have faced contamination of the MCF-7 cell line and have had to restart the line, thus prohibiting the amount of repetitious assay work that can be completed on plants used to treat breast cancer against a known breast cancer cell line.
Regardless, this research project has been an invaluable learning experience and has helped open doors to my future career path in medicine. My three month experience in Ghana has changed my perspective on health care, social equality, and foreign policy, and has expanded my western-centered paradigm. Unfortunately, I am graduating in April and will not be able to take this project as far as I had anticipated. I hope my laboratory team will be able to finish the work, including column chromatography and dose response procedures, in the upcoming year and that the final project will be submitted to a peer reviewed journal.