South African Traditional Medicines Research Unit
Current projects 13 - 15
- In
vitro screening of South African medicinal plants against mycobacterium
tuberculosis and other clinical isolates of bacteria involved in hospital-acquired
infections
Project
Leaders: Prof. P. Smith, Dr G. Elisha
Researcher: E. Madikane
Tuberculosis and hospital-acquired
infections may be lethal, especially in HIV-infected and AIDS patients. Increasing
resistance to antimicrobials and the costs of treating these infections is
a national health burden and proper measures must be put in place in order
to deal with this dilemma.
Many medicinal plants
have never been tested for antimicrobial activity although they have been
reported to treat such conditions.
This project explored
some of these plants with the intention of discovering novel structures devoid
of resistance to existing drugs.
The second objective is
to come up with narrow-acting agents which will make these drugs more affordable,
and avoid resistance by drug selection.
- In
vivo effects of South African traditional medicines against mycobacterial
tuberculosis in experimental mice: alone and in combination with antimycobacterial
drugs
Project
Leaders: Prof. B. Ryffel, Prof. P. Smith, Mr M.G. Matsabisa
Researcher: B. Bapela
In this project, plants
collected from traditional healers are used to determine their therapeutic
activity against experimental mice infected with Mycobacterium tuberculosis.
The plants are extracted
using water or methanol and their yields determined. Wild type mice (C57BL/6)
are infected with Mycobacterial tuberculosis and treatment outcomes with plant
extracts are determined in terms of survival and mycobacterial load.
- The
isolation, characterisation, in vivo activity and in vitro metabolism
of antimalarial compounds from medicinal plant
Project
Leaders: Prof. P. Folb, Mr M.G. Matsabisa
Researcher: M.L. Tselanyane
The aim of this project
is to:
- isolate antimalarial
compounds from the medicinal plant;
- screen them both in
vitro and in vivo for activity;
- characterise the most
active compound; and
- see how this compound
is metabolised in vitro.
The plant roots will be
extracted with dichloromethane and the compounds in the crude extract separated
using the solid phase extraction method. The pure compounds will be screened
both in vitro and in vivo for antimalarial activity. The most active compound
will be characterised using known spectroscopic techniques. The in vitro metabolism
of this compound will be performed and the activity of the metabolite(s) determined. |
