"All we have yet discovered is but a trifle in comparison with what still lies hid in the great treasury of Nature" - Anton von Leeuwenhoek, 1679

The study of medicine, plants, and their effects on the body, coupled with a fascination of people, cultures, and how they live has been the driving force within me to pursue the academic discipline of ethnobotany. After self-designing a major in ethnobotany with a focus specifically on how other cultures find and use medicines from plants, I decided there were two avenues I wanted to explore. I wanted to understand how anthropological and human rights issues were being confronted and what was being done to solve such issues. Further, I wanted to understand how medicinal/pharmaceutical research that involved natural products was conducted. I was able to explore both sides of this discipline by interning at two very different organizations over the past two summers.

Last summer I worked for a non-profit human rights organization in Cambridge, Massachusetts called Cultural Survival. There I gained valuable experience in researching human rights issues and current violations specifically concerning the Pehuenche Indians of Chile. This past summer I was able to experience the other side of such ethnobotanical issues that were concerned mainly with pharmaceutical research. I interned at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, MA where I worked under the supervision of the professor of Biomaterial Sciences and Engineering, Prof. Cho Kyun Rha, on an ongoing research project called the Malaysian-MIT Biotechnology Partnership Program (MMBPP). Initiated in 1999, the MMBPP is a collaboration between MIT and Malaysia's research institutions and universities aimed at building the foundations for a sustainable biotechnology industry in Malaysia. The program couples the unique biodiversity of Malaysia with the cutting-edge technology of MIT in order to harness the medical benefits of Malaysia's botanicals. It is being implemented under the auspices of the Ministry of Science, Technology, and the Environment of Malaysia. Studies are currently being conducted both at MIT and in Malaysia with regular information exchanges. MIT also works to train Malaysian scientists in their technologies.

Two of the different projects that fall under MMBPP are Natural Product Discovery and Oil Palm Biotechnology. Natural Product Discovery is directed towards finding techniques for the development and commercialization of natural products based on the indigenous Malaysian plants Tongat Ali (Eurycoma longifolia) and Pegaga (Centella asiatica). Oil Palm Biotechnology research is being conducted with the goal of cloning oil palm tissue cultures for eventual product commercialization. For the months of June, July, and August, I worked closely with Dr. Rebecca Fry, a post-doctorate at MIT, on various aspects of the commercialization of a component of vitamin E found in palm oil from Malaysia. Prof. Rha is currently working in conjunction with a professor in Malaysia to create a company that would market a dietary supplement called Juvenessence, which could be used as an antioxidant. What makes Juvenessence unique is the presence of tocotrienol (a component of vitamin E) as opposed to just tocopherol, which is less bioactive than tocotrienol. I worked closely with Malaysian scientists and business experts to evaluate the business plan of this new dietary supplement. I researched other dietary supplements and nutraceuticals (any substance that may be considered a food or part of a food and provides medicinal or health benefits, including the prevention and treatment of disease) already on the market that would be potential competitors. I then researched the potential health benefits that tocotrienol would offer to consumers and how it might be marketed in the United States as well as in Malaysia. I contacted distributors and sites for toxicity tests and stabilization tests and was responsible for researching FDA procedures and protocols that pertained to dietary supplements. I conducted a literature search and produced a booklet that explained how this compound affected the body and in what ways it was beneficial. I attended meetings, participated in conferences, and researched the competitiveness of these natural products with modern medicine. In mid-July, Prof. Rha, Dr. Fry, and a number of Malaysian scientists traveled to Malaysia to present the business plan to the Prime Minister and to various biotechnology companies with the hope of gaining potential venture capitalists. Once they returned, I worked with them to put together a presentation that explained the steps involved from natural product discovery and development to the actual commercialization of nutraceuticals.

This internship provided me with a wonderful opportunity to see what goes on not only concerning pharmaceutical research but also what must occur in the commercialization and marketing of natural products and nutraceuticals. It was extremely valuable in that it exposed me to the rigors of chemical analysis and extraction, as well as to the obstacles that must be overcome when trying to introduce such a dietary supplement on the market. It definitely opened my eyes to another side and a different realm of the discipline of ethnobotany. This experience has made me stop and question what kind of education I want to pursue in the future. It has sparked my interest in the field of pharmacology/ethnopharmacology and has made me ask questions about cultural compensations, Intellectual Property Rights, and patents. I will incorporate these questions and the knowledge gained at MIT into a senior honors thesis on Intellectual Property Rights, specifically related to the problems anthropologists and ethnobotanists face today regarding indigenous compensations and the preservation of ethnobotanical knowledge.

The purpose of my thesis is to explore the problems anthropologists and ethnobotanists face while conducting research on indigenous/traditional knowledge. With the uprise of the commercialization of genetic resources and enterprises based upon biodiversity prospecting, there has been an increased interest in traditional knowledge resulting in the inevitable problem of intellectual property rights and appropriate compensation to indigenous cultures. To date, most indigenous people have not received the benefits that come from the appropriation of their knowledge, including profits that result from drug development by major pharmaceutical companies. The research that I will conduct for my thesis will focus on contemporary solutions that can be established for the successful use of indigenous knowledge by the global drug industry.