African Traditional Herbal Research Clinic ... - Blackherbals.com

Continued from page 24 – ICRAF discovers Wonder Planting farmers how to process and manufacture Artemisiamedicines. Harvesting and air-drying the leaves, as wellas the production of medicines, is a straight forward, nonlabourintensive project. Even after three years, driedleaves retain practically 100 percent of their artemisinincontent, suggesting that under proper conditionsArtemisia medicines can be stored for a long time.When asked about the scale of Artemisia farming inSouthern Africa, Dr Patrick Matakala, RegionalCoordinator of ICRAF Southern Africa, replies: "Iwouldn't call it large scale production for profit yet, butthat is where we are heading as a programme."Nonetheless, for the ambitious farmers there is a definitepossibility of scaling up Artemisia production for sale topharmaceutical companies in the future. There willcertainly be a market. WHO estimates that of the 40countries-20 in Africa-using Artemisinin-based drugs,five are expected to have shortages due to lack of rawplant extracts. This includes most of the countries in theSouthern Africa Development Community (SADC)region. However, scaling up for pharmaceuticals willrequire resolving a few proprietary issues surrounding A-3, the rights to which are controlled by an undisclosedpharmaceutical player.Meanwhile, various organizations around the worldcelebrated the successes of Partnerships as theycommemorated Africa Malaria Day 2005. Under thetheme "Unite Against Malaria", celebrations focussed onthe importance of partnership at the national, regional andglobal levels for fighting malaria."Working with partners has allowed Zambia to makegreat strides in the fight against malaria, which includeexceeding our 2005 target for providing malariaprevention for children under five," said Zambian HealthMinister Dr Brian Chituwo, during this year's mainregional Africa Malaria Day event.The Zambian government's roll Back Malaria Initiativeintends to achieve reduced deaths due to malaria by 50per cent, by the year 2010.http://www.newsfromafrica.org/newsfromafrica/articles/art_10249.html☻☻☻☻☻☻-25- Traditional African Clinic July/August 2007Case Study: SyntheticBiology’s Poster Child –Microbial Production ofArtemisinin to Treat Malaria”Excerpts from Extreme Synthetic GeneticEngineering, An Introduction to Synthetic Biology,January 2007, ETC GroupOver 90% of malaria deaths occur in sub-Saharan Africa.Global health initiatives have failed to deliver on simpleprevention measures such as mosquito netting, and theworsening crisis has led the World Health Organization(WHO) to reverse a 30-year policy – it now backs the useof a 20th-century silver bullet, the controversial pesticideDDT, as a malaria prevention strategy.WHO regards artemisinin-based drugs as the best hopefor treating over one million people – most of themAfrican children – who would otherwise die of malariaeach year.However, a global shortfall in the supply of naturalartemisinin, which is extracted from sweet wormwoodplants (Artemisia annua), has kept the price of this muchprizedcompound out of reach for poor people.Using synthetic biology to combat malaria is compelling:a technological fix comes to the rescue when investmentsin malaria prevention and control in Africa are declining,and failing.In April 2006, Professor Jay Keasling of the University ofCalifornia-Berkeley and 14 collaborators announced inNature they had succeeded in engineering a yeast strainto produce artemisinic acid, which is a necessary step inthe production of artemisinin itself.Using sophisticated bioinformatics and screeningtechniques, the team claims to have discovered the genesinvolved in Artemisia annua’s natural production ofartemisinic acid, and managed to insert and express themin a modified yeast strain. The microbe thus behaves likea miniature factory to produce artemisinic acid.According to Keasling, what’s left to do is to increase theyields of artemisinic acid, and then use “high-yieldingchemistry” to convert artemisinic acid to artemisinin.The promise of unlimited supplies of a drug that can rollback a global killer has become the raison d’être forsynthetic biology and given the field a philanthropicsheen – reminiscent of biotech’s much-heraldedgenetically engineered, Vitamin-A rich “Golden Rice” tofeed the poor.Continued on page 26