Transcript N Crouch - ABS Initiative

Anti-Malaria
Consortium
Dr Maureen Wolfson
[email protected]
Indigenous Knowledge on Plant
Use
 South Africa has a rich
tradition of medicinal
plant use
 70%+ of the population
consult approx. 200 000
Traditional Healers
 400 million usage events
/ year
(N Crouch)
Plants: Why Drugs from?
• Natural products - historically
useful leads
• Extensive ethnomedicinal plant
use and knowledge in SA
• SA’s rich floral diversity:
•
10% of earth’s vascular plants on
0.2% of it’s surface
•
Between 24 000 - 30 000 taxa
•
80% endemic - 13 families and 560
genera
•
The world’s richest botanical
hotspot: The Cape Floristic Region
(Fynbos), with 6 000 endemic taxa
(N Crouch)
Ethnomedicinal Approach Helps to
Narrow the Search (N Crouch)
24 000 plant taxa in southern
Africa
7000 recorded ethnomedicinal
plants
600 associated with malaria or
fever
[210 taxa selected for
antimalarial screening]
Plant Selection Procedure
Ethnomedicinal
Note:
Data sourced by
literature searching
(N Crouch)
Chemosystematic
Develop novel
drugs from
PLANTS
Other
Product Development Pipeline
Plant
Product
Proof of principle
Basic
Research
Development
Proof of concept
Validation
of efficacy
and safety
Upscaling of
product and
initial agroprocessing
Act 10 requires Access and Benefit Sharing
(ABS) agreements with communities and
genetic resource holders, as well as permits at
this stage
Technology
transfer
Manufacturing
Consortium
Partners
 Medical Research Council
 University of Cape Town
 Council for Scientific and Industrial
Research
 SANBI
 University of Western Cape
 University of Pretoria
Genetic Resource used
 Aim to develop new medicines based
on indigenous plants and indigenous
knowledge for the treatment of
malaria.
 Agreements:
Consortium Benefit sharing
Agreement
Trust Fund Agreement
Agreed benefits




Multidisciplinary scientific activity
Capacity building
Technology transfer
Development of affordable
anti-malaria drugs
 Cultivation and agroprocessing
 Develop a technology platform for SA
with the elements of the value chain
for drug discovery.
Benefit-sharing
 Any financial benefits through
royalties divided in two with 50%
benefits being divided equally by
consortium partners and 50% to be
deposited in a Trust Fund to be shared
with stakeholders who provided
resources or knowledge.
Benefits realised to date
 Couple of promising leads being
investigated further
 Extensive database on medicinal
plants
 The consortium approach has
promoted multidisciplinary research,
information, technology transfer,
capacity building and innovation