Biodiversity conservation and drug discovery: Can they be combined? The Suriname and Madagascar experiences

Abstract

The approach to new drugs through natural products has proved to be the single most successful strategy for the discovery of new drugs, but in recent years its use has been deemphasized by many pharmaceutical companies in favor of approaches based on combinatorial chemistry and genomics, among others. Drug discovery from natural sources requires continued access to plant, marine, and microbial biomass, and so the preservation of tropical rainforests is an important part of our drug discovery program. Sadly, many of the tropical forests of the world are under severe environmental pressure, and deforestation is a serious problem in most tropical countries. One way to combat this loss is to demonstrate their value as potential sources of new pharmaceutical or agrochemical products. As part of an effort to integrate biodiversity conservation and drug discovery with economic development, we initiated an International Cooperative biodiversity Group (ICBG) to discover potential pharmaceuticals from the plant biodiversity of Suriname and Madagascar. The Group, established with funding from agencies of the United States government, involved participants from the USA, Suriname, and Madagascar. The basic approach was to search for bioactive plants in the Suriname and Malagasy flora, and to isolate their bioactive constituents by the best available methods, but the work included capacity building as well as research. Progress on this project will be reported, drawing on results obtained from the isolation of bioactive natural products from Suriname and Madagascar. The benefits of this general approach to biodiversity and drug discovery will also be discussed.

Cardenolides of Leptadenia madagascariensis from the Madagascar dry forest

“…In our continuing search for biologically active natural products from tropical rainforests as part of an International Cooperative Biodiversity Group (ICBG) program,2,3 we obtained an EtOH extract from the roots of the plant Leptadenia madagascariensis Decne. (Apocynaceae) from Madagascar.…”

Bioactive compounds from Stuhlmannia moavi from the Madagascar dry forest

“…As a part of the Madagascar International Cooperative Biodiversity Group (ICBG) program, 1,2 an ethanol extract of the leaves of a plant initially identified as an Eligmocarpus sp. was selected for evaluation as a possible source of new antiproliferative agents based on its activity against the A2780 ovarian cancer cell line.…”

Bioprospecting: Creating a Value for Biodiversity

“…These include the various International Cooperative Biodiversity Groups (ICBG) funded by the NIH in the USA and efforts coordinated by individual universities such as Rutgers in New Jersey and Strathclyde in Scotland. ICBG programmes involve US institutions and commercial companies with overseas participants in Costa Rica, Fiji, Indonesia, Madagascar, Panama, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, and Vietnam and Laos (Cao & Kingston, 2009;Kingston, 2011). Rutgers University hosts a relatively new initiative: the Global Institute for BioExploration, GIBEX.…”