Larry and I recently met in London to kick off Trials of Life and we called up a few old friends and met some new friends. In the first of this london based series of podcasts Larry discusses with Bob the overlapping projects with FDA and EMA which we worked on but also some of the major concerns about the quality of medicinal plants and supply chain contamination, fraudulent ingredients and tracking new species.
The work of Kew Gardens is extensive and invaluable! We thank you Bob for your time and enthusiastic energy and passion!
Highlights
- 00:00 – Hello Bob, here we are in London
- 00:15 – Bob’s background and PhD at Natural History Museum.
- 02:30 – Bob starts at Kew, projects and experts there 03:35 – Kew’s history and purpose
- 04:20 – Kew’s databases
- 05:20 – Limitations of pubmed and web searches on plants
- 05:50 – Creating unique plan naming
- 07:30 – Miscellaneous collections at Kew; hats n walking sticks 🙂 07:48 – Seed bank and DNA banks
- 10:20 – Naming challenges and duplication
- 11:00 – Frank Switzers work at FDA
- 12:00 – Work with Brazilian botanists
- 14:00 – Professor Matos ‘farmacias vivas’ living pharmicies project
- 16:00 – Potential of benefiting from replication of Matos projects globally 18:00 – Herbal medicines and Ayeurdic traditions, roots of medicine
- 20:00 – Need for evidence based upon plants
- 21:00 – untapped potential of plants ‘the worlds best chemists’
- 22:00 – Tumeric and curcumin example of misunderstood potency
- 22:57 – add piperine in increase biovailability
- 23:00 – the lack of evidence and understanding of complete list of chemicals in plants 24:20 – Definition of Herbal substances
- 26:10 – IDMP project still slowing being rolled out (see below links)
- 27:00 – Welcome trust funding and MPNS project (Medicinal Plant Name Services)
- 28:45 – Challenge of quality of herbal medicines and fake or adulterated substances.
- 32:00 – toxicity definitions and misunderstandings
- 33:00 – Kew clinical trials on herbal remedies for Alzhiemers proving some efficacy
- 36:00 – Australias work on identifying herbal remedies
- 37:00 – Plants for Health project – food supplements focus and cosmetics; toxicity and substitution
- 41:00 – there is no ‘right name’ for a plant
- 41:30 – Efficacy of plants and Kew projects and pharmacopeia work tieing together plant uses
- 43:00 – The vision of MPNS as an underlying reference system for global databases
- 44:00 – Acacia as an example of a complex genus
- 47:00 – close