As part of the 48th Annual Meeting of the Society for Economic Botany (SEB) convened on June 4-7, 2007, a state of the art scientific symposium under the title of “In the service of human health: Continuing search for new plant-based therapies” was held on June 4 by the SEB Symposium Committee chaired by Dr. Djaja Doel Soejarto (University of Illinois at Chicago). Dr. Gail Mahady, Dr. Charlotte Gyllenhaal, and Dr. Scott Franzblau served as members of the committee.
The symposium brought together two NIH-funded programs: The NCCAM Botanical Research Centers and the Plant-based ICBG/Fogarty International Center Program projects. The goal of this symposium was to highlight the achievements of these programs, while promoting a unique scientific exchange that would bring about advances in both programs. The symposium was convened in the chapel of the Lake Forest College at Lake Forest, and was supported by a grant (Grant 1R13AT004364-01; D. D. Soejarto, Principal Investigator) from the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM). The Society for Economic Botany and the University of Illinois at Chicago co-sponsored the symposium.
Four speakers of the Botanical Centers made the morning presentations:
Dr. Norman R. Farnsworth (Keynote Speaker; Director, UIC/NIH Center for Botanical Dietary Supplements Research in Women’s Health, College of Pharmacy, University of Illinois at Chicago, 833 South Wood Street, Chicago, Illinois 60612);
Dr. Barrie Cassileth (Laurance S. Rockefeller Chair in Integrative Medicine, Chief, Integrative Medicine Service, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, 1429 First Avenue at 74th Street, New York, New York 10021);
Dr. Connie Weaver (Head, Department of Foods and Nutrition, Purdue University, 700 West State Street, West Lafayette, Indiana 47907);
Dr. Diane F. Birt (Director, Iowa Center for Research on Botanicals Dietary Supplements, Iowa State University, 215 MacKay Hall, 2312 Food Science Building, Ames, Iowa 50011-1061).
At the beginning of the afternoon session an overview of the ICBG Program was presented by Dr. Joshua Rosenthal (Deputy Director, Division of International Training and Research, and Director, ICBG Program, Fogarty International Center, NIH, 31 Center Drive, Bethesda, MD 20892-2220).
This was followed by presentations from four ICBG investigators:
Dr. Ilya Raskin (Principal Investigator, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan ICBG; Rutgers University, Cook College, Foran Hall, 59 Dudley Road, New Brunswick, NJ 08901-8520);
Dr. Louis Barrows (Principal Investigator, Papua New Guinea ICBG; Department of Pharmacology & Toxicology, College of Pharmacy, University of Utah Health Sciences Center, 30 S. 2000 E., Room 201, Salt Lake City, UT 84112);
Dr. Todd Capson (Co-Investigator, Panama ICBG; Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Apartado Postal 0843-03092, Panamá, República de Panamá);
Dr. Shugeng Cao (Co-Investigator, Madagascar ICBG; Department of Chemistry, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 107 Davidson Hall, Blacksburg, VA 24061-0001).
This issue of Pharmaceutical Biology is dedicated to the proceedings of the lectures presented in this symposium.
The support of NCCAM (Grant 1R13AT004364-01), and the co-sponsorship of the University of Illinois at Chicago and the Society for Economic Botany are gratefully acknowledged. Thanks are expressed to Lake Forest College, for hosting the symposium event. To Dr. David Lentz, President of the Society (2006-2007), we express special thanks for his encouragements in organizing this symposium.
Symposium Committee