Newsroom

CORVALLIS - The world's leading researchers in natural products ranging from pain-relievers and anti-cancer drugs to cosmetics will be attending a five-day conference at Oregon State University this month.

Sponsored by the OSU College of Pharmacy, the 46th annual meeting of the American Society of Pharmacognosy (http://www.phcog.org/AnnualMtg/Corvallis.html) opens on Saturday, July 23.

"A rich diversity of U.S. and foreign scientists will be participating in the conference," said William Gerwick, OSU professor of natural products chemistry in the College of Pharmacy.

More than 400 scientists and 300 poster displays are expected at the professional conference, which is based at OSU's LaSells Stewart Center and the CH2M-Hill Alumni Center.

Pharmacognosy is a branch of pharmacology and organic chemistry that deals with drugs in their crude or natural state and with medicinal herbs or other plants, Gerwick said. In recent years, the field has also used sophisticated chemical techniques to track down the individual compounds that give plants or other crude materials their biological activity, and has also employed genetic methodologies to study how such compounds are produced.

Gerwick is known internationally for his research on extracting different compounds from marine algae that exhibit promising cancer-fighting properties. Focusing primarily on blue-green algae, he and his research team have uncovered numerous natural compounds that not only show promise against cancer, but also have anti-viral and anti-inflammatory properties.

The conference theme is "Frontiers in Bioorganic and Natural Products Chemistry."

"The whole conference is about discovery of new substances from nature and how we can capture or harness the useful properties of any of these products," Gerwick said.

Limited sessions will be offered on Saturday, but the conference begins in earnest on Sunday with poster sessions, talks and a symposium exploring natural products biosynthesis.

Monday, the forms and development of toxicity in marine life will be explored in addition to a symposium dedicated to the growing role of metabolic engineering of natural products in plants, while a Tuesday session will look at chemical synthesis in the development of natural products as drug leads.

Also on Tuesday, researchers will explore interactions between microorganisms and their hosts, Gerwick said.

"This is a fascinating area of research," he said. "For example, we might collect a plant and then isolate an active compound; but then we must ask if it is the plant or a microorganism associated with the plant that makes this compound."

In some cases, scientists have found that rather than the plant itself having beneficial properties, the benefits are actually attributable to microorganisms such as bacteria that co-exist and interact with the plant, Gerwick pointed out.

Among the researchers scheduled at the conference are Bill Fenical, distinguished professor at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. A pioneer in marine natural products, he discovered anti-inflammatory compounds in corals that are used in face creams.

University of Illinois researcher Norman Farnsworth will be honored with the society's Research Achievement Award. Farnsworth is a founder of the society and has studied the chemical basis for herbal medicine.