NATIONAL CANCER INSTITUTE

Since 1986, plants have been collected by the Missouri Botanical Garden and other botanical research institutions throughout the United States in collaboration with the United States National Cancer Institute (NCI). The objective has been discovery of novel compounds to treat cancer and HIV-AIDS. Recently, in reviewing these collections, we discovered a large sampling bias: almost all collections have come from low elevations. This is in marked contrast to our results from Tibet, the work of Dr. Jan Salick, Senior Curator of Ethnobotany and Alice H. Brown Curator in the Wm L Brown Center. Jan has shown repeatedly that many, if not most, Tibetan medicines are collected from Alpine meadows and the highest elevations of plant life in the Himalayas. Thus, she has been contracted by NCI to rectify the previous lack of high elevation plant specimens tested for anti-cancer and HIV-AIDS activity.

Recently, an NCI contract has been signed with Nepal to carry out these collections in 2009–2010. Since the rate of drug discovery is so low and monetary benefit seldom forth-coming, Jan hopes to emphasize benefit sharing during the collection and testing stages. Immediate benefit sharing will include training of Nepalese graduate students in field collection and specimen preparation techniques, collaboration with Nepalese botanists on this and other research grants in Nepal, and provision of US training opportunities for our Nepalese collaborators.

MBG Personnel

Jan Salick [webpage], Ph.D., Senior Curator of Ethnobotany and Alice H. Brown Curator of the Wm L Brown Center, Principal Investigator. Jan Salick manages the program, coordinating all collecting trips with foreign collaborators, processing, identification and databasing of all specimens, and handling operational and financial administrative responsibilities.

Nanci Ross, Ph.D., Research Specialist of the Wm L Brown Center, Post-doctoral botanist. Nanci was hired in 2008 and is working with Jan Salick on a variety of ethnobotanical projects in the Himalayas, including the NCI project. Nanci is in charge of coordinating the collecting in Nepal and US contributions to the NCI project.

Alyce Kuhlman, Research Specialist, is responsible for label production and database management. Alyce will maintain the database and incorporate all specimen identifications, from specialists at MBG and other institutions, into the database and forward this information to the NCI at regular intervals. Alyce, along with Nanci Ross, has also assumed responsibility for processing voucher specimens from Nepal and ensuring that duplicates are distributed to specialists for identification.

Collaborator in Nepal

Suresh Ghimire, Ph.D. and Associate Professor, Centre of Evolutionary and Functional Ecology, Tribhuvan University, Kathmandu is in charge of the Nepalese graduate student participation in the project, field collecting expeditions, and identification of voucher specimens.

Approach to Sampling

The NCI program makes a concerted effort to gather a taxonomically representative sample of the taxonomic diversity of plants available in the areas of collection. Efforts are made to secure representatives of as many families and genera as possible to ensure maximum chemical diversity of the extracts produced. In addition, woody plants are collected as multiple samples, separating leaves from stems, bark, roots, flowers, or fruits so that each of these parts, often quite distinct chemically, can be evaluated independently.

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