Botanical Therapeutics Botanical therapeutics are health and wellness products derived from plants and delivered in the form of drugs, dietary supplements (nutraceuticals), functional foods or cosmetic ingredients. The ancient knowledge that plants contain compounds that improve human health and well-being served as the foundation for the pharmaceutical industry as well as for a rapidly growing food supplement and nutraceutical industry. Nevertheless, the state-of-the-art biotechnological methods are not often applied to discovering novel biologically active molecules in plants or to increasing their content and efficacy. We rely on the use of sequential MS/MS, real time PCR, bioinformatics and high content cellular assays to identify pharmacologically active phytochemicals and to study their pharmacological activity. Our laboratory utilizes these advanced tools and techniques to discover, develop, characterize and study a new generation of botanical therapeutics. Our scientists also work at the state-of-the-art Rutgers greenhouses and experimental animal facility dedicated to botanical therapeutics research. Our goal is to discover and develop novel botanical therapeutics from plants, define and enhance their pharmacological effect and assure their efficient production in plant-based systems. As part of this project, we are developing methods for eliciting, collecting, screening and characterizing pharmacologically active natural products and defining nature of their health-promoting interactions. We are particularly interested in plant-derived therapeutics composed of mixtures of synergistically active molecules that simultaneously affect several disease-related therapeutic targets. For our research we rely on the extensive, international networks of collaborations, which includes Universities in at least four countries, US National Institute of Health and several pharmaceutical, consumer health, cosmecutical and food companies. Currently, we are concentrating on anti-inflammatory, anti-obesity, anti-diabetes and anti-cancer agents from plants. We target the modes of action that affect the expression of multiple disease-related genes and diseases associated with cellular transduction pathways. Several of the botanical therapeutics discovered and studied in our laboratory are currently in large-scale clinical trials supported by pharmaceutical and health care companies. A large portion of our botanical therapeutics research is funded by Phytomedics Inc, a rapidly growing botanical therapeutics company spun-off from Rutgers in 1996. Our affiliation with Phytomedics provides a direct connection to a large population of patients in need of botanical therapeutics and directs our research to the most important health applications. International BioExploration Our laboratory serves as the headquarters of the Global Institute for BioExploration. GIBEX is a global research and development network that promotes ethical, natural product-based pharmacological bioexploration to benefit human health and the environment in developing countries. Nine African countries, five American countries and four Asian countries are current GIBEX members. GIBEX also works with the indigenous communities in Alaska and North Dakota. GIBEX is guided by the pioneering "Reversing the Flow" paradigm intended to bring pharmacological screens (Screens-to-Nature technology) to developing countries and indigenous communities. GIBEX does not remove any natural resources from partnering countries. Instead, it trains and equips local scientists and students with innovative, cost-effective, and portable drug-discovery tools and technologies that can be directly deployed into forests, savannas, deserts, and marshes. In addition to adapting the process of drug discovery and commercialization to the needs of partnering countries and communities, GIBEX promotes sustainable infrastructure and capacity improvements, local intellectual property ownership, conservation, educational opportunities, and entrepreneurship. One of the largest components of GIBEX is the "International Cooperative Biodiversity Groups" (ICBG) research project that involves four Central Asia countries, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, and a large group of US scientists. ICBG is a joint initiative between The National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. It funds research, educational activities in the areas of biodiversity conservation, economic capacity and human health through discovery and development of natural therapeutic agents for major human diseases. The ICBG program provides substantial resources to explore the biodiversity of Central Asia and to facilitate educational and cultural exchanges with these friendly countries. The unifying theme of the ICBG program is the concept that the discovery and development of pharmaceuticals and other useful agents from natural products can, under appropriate circumstances, promote economic opportunities and enhanced research capacity in developing countries while conserving the biological resources. Equitable benefit sharing with host country stakeholders and participants is an important component of the overall program. NIH Dietary Supplement Research Center focusing on Botanicals Our laboratory runs the Botanical Core for the newly formed National Institutes of Health (NIH) Botanical Center focusing on Metabolic Syndrome. Dr. Raskin serves as an Associate Director for this Center, which is a collaborative effort between the Pennington Biomedical Research Center, the Agricultural Center of Louisiana State University (LSU) and the Biotechnology Center of Agriculture and the Environment of Rutgers University. The overall goals of the Center are: to foster a collaborative and interactive research environment among three institutions to establish an internationally recognized center of excellence in the area of botanicals and mechanisms of metabolic disease, to identify botanicals with potential efficacy in metabolic syndrome, to identify the bioactive constituents and biomarkers of those botanicals, to provide necessary preclinical data on botanicals and mechanisms of action and to translate the foregoing findings into clinical studies in humans. The overarching aim is to find eventual applications for human health in the area of metabolic syndrome treatment, and to expand the critical mass of investigators addressing botanical research by identifying, recruiting and mentoring promising young investigators. Biomedical Agriculture In collaboration with NJ Experiment Station (NJAES) and NJ farming community we are developing agricultural system suitable for the large-scale, standardized production of botanical therapeutics. Today's agriculture mainly supplies people with calories and basic nutrients. However, in the near future, world agriculture will start producing crops and crop products that prevent and treat diseases while increasing human longevity, productivity, and quality of life. This health-oriented agriculture ('pharming') must develop and adopt new highly-controlled cultivation methods that treat a green plant like a chemical plant, thus guaranteeing reliable standardized and optimized production of bioactives. We hope that our work will enable future farmers to move to the forefront of pharmaceutical, nutraceutical, and chemical manufacturing, while attaining better value for their crops than is presently possible through conventional agriculture. Our laboratory is actively collaborating with NJ hydroponic growers with a goal to develop new pharming technologies and to study their effects on the production of botanical therapeutics.