Cytotoxicity of Thirty-Six Moroccan Plants Against Four Cancer Cell Lines and 3T3 Cells

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J. Aukai Riordan and Dr. Rex G. Cates, Integrative Biology

It is not hard to believe that eighty percent of the populations of Asia, Africa, and Latin America rely principally on traditional medicine for their primary source of health care. However, many people do not realize that many of the best-selling pharmaceuticals in the Western world are derived directly from medicinal plants. Considering this great potential, it is unfortunate that scientists have only tested a small percent of plants for medicinal activity. At a time when pathogens are developing immunity to traditional antibiotics and when many new and terrifying ailments are cropping up across the world, there is an intense need to find new and effective medicines. One of the most efficient places to begin this search is to test the pharmaceutical value of plants that traditional healers have been using for centuries.

It is for this purpose that Dr. Rex Cates worked to establish the Natural Products Research Lab at BYU. Our particular project focused on medicinal plants from Morocco. Working closely with villagers from Morocco and professors from the Hassan II Institute of Agronomy and Veterinary Science (IAV) who collected the plants, I tested thirty-six plants against various pathogens (Candida albicans, Staphylococcus aureus, and Escherichia coli), cancers (prostate, cervical, skin and breast cancer), and one normal cell line (3T3 cells). Apart from the potential for drug development, our joint goal with IAV is to improve the quality of life for villagers in Morocco who use these plants by: (1) boosting their economy by finding pharmaceutically-active plants that can be grown and sold to drug/herbal companies, (2) dispersing information on which commonly-used plants are most effective in combating disease, and (3) identifying and teaching about which plants show toxicity against normal cells, thus posing a danger to people and their livestock, especially goats. Based on this screening, three plants showed potential for further drug development. These plants will be sent to the National Institute of Health (NIH) to further evaluate their pharmaceutical potential.

The second half of this project included presenting our findings to our partners in Morocco. This past summer, I went to Morocco as part of a team from the Benson Institute which included Kent Crookston (Dean, College of Biology and Agriculture), Rex Cates (my mentor), Andrew Cardon (fellow research assistant), and myself. While there, I presented my results to professors and villagers at a governor’s conference in Khenifra, Morocco. We also collected more plants for testing and augmented relationships and collaboration with our colleagues from (IAV).

Perhaps the greatest difficulty we faced came from international regulations on the transportation of plant matter. Ideally we extract compounds from fresh plants to avoid losing any potentially active compounds. However, law required plants to be sent dry which necessitated some changes in our methodology and may have resulted in changes in plant chemistry.

On the other hand, the collaboration we have established with IAV, particularly with Professor Driss Lamnaouer who has been central to this project from its infancy, has been extremely rewarding for me personally and for BYU at large. Through their partnership, our time in Morocco was significantly more effective; allowing us to accomplish in two weeks what would have otherwise taken two months. Their association allowed us to quickly build a rapport with villagers, and their extensive knowledge of Moroccan culture and traditional medicine was key to our success. In return, the data that we collected will be very beneficial to their country. We look forward to working with them further on this project. I have come to the conclusion that effective collaboration with natives significantly increases international significance and is the key to success and longevity of any international project.

References

  • World Health Organization. 2003, May. Retrieved December 9, 2004: http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/2003/fs134/en/.
  • Cragg, G.M., D.J. Newman, and K. M. Snader., “Natural products in drug discovery and development,” Journal of Natural Products 60 (1997): 52-60.
  • One author believes that only one half of one percent of all plant species have been extensively studied to determine their medicinal value (Balick, M.J., P.A. Cox., Plants, People, and Culture: The science of ethnobotany. (New York: Scientific American Library, 1996), 228.
  • For example, Clematis cirrhosa, a common medicinal plant in Morocco, has been shown to cause cirrhosis of the liver. (Bull, L.B., C.C.J. Culvenor, A.T. Dick,. The pyrrolizidine alkaloids (New York: American Elsevier Publishing Company Inc, 1969).
  • Potential was based on a variety of factors, including, but not limited to: activity against normal 3T3 cells, activity against pathogens and/or cancers, and how well drugs maintained activity at varying doses.
  • Acknowledgments: Dr. Driss Lamnaouer of IAV