Foto: Inken Dworak-Schultz
Seeking new active ingredients from natural remedies
Fabien Schultz heads the new junior research group Ethnopharmacology and Zoopharmacognosy at the Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine (BNITM). He collects natural remedies in African countries - and investigates the neuroactive self-medication of chimpanzees, mountain gorillas and elephants.
Many pathogens are resistant to conventional drugs. There is therefore an urgent need to find new active substances and develop new drugs from them. The interdisciplinary junior research group Ethnopharmacology and Zoopharmacognosy led by Dr Fabien Schultz pursues a participatory and sustainable research approach. Ethnopharmacologists research natural materials such as plants, fungi, animal secretions and insects that people use as remedies. The aim is to document knowledge about these traditional remedies and identify new pharmacological agents that could be used in modern medicine.
The group is also looking closely at the ethical aspects of its research. These include financial and non-financial benefit sharing for the use of intellectual property, traditional knowledge and natural resources.
A traditional healer from Bulindi, Uganda, takes a look at Dr Fabien Schultz's field notes.
It is very important to Schultz to work together with the indigenous peoples. ‘It is only with their expertise and cooperation that I can collect promising remedies. After the analysis, I try my best to give my findings back to the indigenous communities. I believe it is the responsibility of scientists to contribute to the transfer of knowledge once a study has been completed,’ says Schultz, explaining his approach.
The SpiriPharm project is investigating neuroactive remedies
In his project 'SpiriPharm - Between Emerald Worlds: Exploring the spiritual, ritual, and pharmacological facets of neuroactive materials used by humans and animals in Uganda and Tanzaniam', Schultz wants to document neuroactive, potentially mind-altering remedies that local people use culturally, spiritually, ceremonially, ritually or recreationally at six study locations for the first time. The foundation is funding the project as part of the ‘Pioneering Projects - Exploring the Unknown Unknown’ initiative.
In this project, the research group members will also be tracking wild mountain gorillas and chimpanzees: Do they ingest mind-altering substances? If so, are these substances similar, or even identical, to the neuroactive substances ingested by humans?
Chimpanzee mother and baby in Bulindi, western Uganda: The Bulindi chimpanzees are part of a larger population of over 300 chimpanzees that survive in shrinking patches of forest on agricultural land.
Through workshops, the scientists share their research results with local communities, and through community projects, local people solve self-defined problems in a sustainable way. The question of intellectual property is a more complicated one: How can financial and non-financial compensation be achieved for the knowledge of the remedies, and what happens when the knowledge comes from mountain gorillas and chimpanzees? Schultz and his group hope to develop best-practice models for this.
Another goal is to gain new insights into the health and societal well-being of neuroactive substances, which could possibly lead to a shift away from negative Western views on stimulants and tranquilisers.
Valuable library of natural compounds
Over the past few years, Schultz has built up a database of crude extracts. It currently contains more than 586 unique extracts from more than 142 plant, insect and fungal species from Uganda, South Africa, Burkina Faso, and Germany. With two out of every five plants currently threatened with extinction, Schultz and his team are archiving the substances for future generations. Most of them have never been studied in a laboratory. The junior research group is now changing that. For each remedy they collect, the researchers make three different extracts, each containing different ingredients. They are then testing the extracts for antibacterial and anti-inflammatory properties and whether they are effective against certain parasites.
"We can analyse promising extracts in more detail. In the future, we want to use artificial intelligence to identify the pharmacologically active compounds in the extracts. The results I am looking for could have the potential for scientific breakthroughs. For example, we could discover new antimalarials, novel antibiotics or anti-inflammatories," concludes Schultz.
You can read the entire BNITM press release (in German) at https://www.bnitm.de/aktuelles/news/neue-wirkstoffe-aus-natuerlichen-heilmitteln.