David Shapshak
A ground-breaking new antibiotic has been discovered by a team of scientists based in Knysna, the latest in a series of innovative South African medical discoveries from natural sources.
The potentially powerful broad-spectrum antibiotic is a molecule extracted from a South African plant species, says Greg Gilbert, a chemist who directs the scientific team at Shimoda Research. He believes the discovery is a significant breakthrough in the search for new solutions to combat human pathogens – disease-causing organisms.
The team discovered the molecule while looking for a possible cure for cancer – Gilbert’s ultimate aim.
The need for new forms of antibiotics is urgent and the world’s drug companies are scrambling to find alternatives, says Gilbert. The strength of current drugs is waning, caused by a build-up in resistance to them.
The most powerful existing antibiotic – vancomycin – is often only used as a last resort by public health authorities because of its cost, while other less expensive antibiotics are not as effective as they once were.
Gilbert (43) heads a team of eminent biochemists, including Dr Graham Shelver, and has set up a highly sophisticated and well-equipped laboratory in the Knysna forest.
The team has been researching the antibiotic molecule for two years.
The search for potential cures from the plant kingdom is gaining momentum, with indigenous people around the world selling their traditional remedies to major pharmaceutical companies.
“A large number of additional plant remedies are now being re-explored in an attempt to determine and define their active ingredients,” says Shelver.
In South Africa, the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) runs a bio-prospecting project to find such drugs and has already sold one to pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, manufacturers of Viagra.
The CSIR is hoping that its drug, an appetite suppressant pill dubbed P57, can be turned into a prescription medicine with an estimated market potential of more than $3-billion.
This was followed last year by another natural plant discovery, a mosquito repellent extracted from an Mpumalanga bush that the CSIR patented after the local villagers presented it to the council to help prevent malaria.
As a quarter of all prescription drugs in the United States are derived from plants, the potential benefit for South Africa could be untold.
This is the abundance Shimoda is tapping into with the southern Cape’s fynbos, which Gilbert describes as “the world’s most diverse and richest plant kingdom.
“Our research into the extraction of active bio-molecules from these plant species is extremely exciting, and while we are predominantly looking at producing a cancer drug the spin-off in other areas, such as this antibiotic, reinforces our belief that the world’s plant kingdom holds the key to a host of hitherto unsolved medicinal questions,” he says.
Gilbert’s cancer research has stretched over the past seven years and he is confident the cure will be found in the fynbos ecosystem.
Shimoda Research is looking to venture capital markets to raise finances to fund the cancer research.