Steven Totura sifted through the massive freezer at the science field station, shoving aside packs of hamburger buns meant for the university picnic in search of the staff’s latest discovery.
“Here they are,” he said, triumphantly lifting out three vials of dark-brown plant extract.
The syrupy substance might look like uncapped finger paint, but to University of Illinois at Chicago scientists, it could some day be a potent weapon in the war against cancer.
The extract is one of dozens of discoveries being quietly pursued in a 40-acre, tucked-away corner of Downers Grove called the Pharmacognosy Field Station.
The laboratory is an element of the university’s functional foods program, which recently made national headlines for documenting the cancer-fighting properties of table staples such as red wine and cabbage.
“It’s like hunting for a needle in a haystack,” said Norman Farnsworth, senior university scholar and a nationally recognized expert on pharmacognosy, the study of medicinal plants and other natural substances.
“Up to the ’70s, people didn’t think much about nutrition. They never thought about certain things in foods that are not nutritious but have health benefits.”
Today, the search for natural immune boosters is a crucial mission of the pharmacognosy station, a handful of buildings surrounded by lush green groves and gardens, each its own kind of mini-laboratory.
Like students vying for the blue ribbon at the state science fair, researchers from a variety of scientific disciplines are working on everything from a potential new sugar substitute to the latest hope against HIV- and drug-resistant tuberculosis.
The university hopes to eventually help bring new products to the market, Farnsworth said, and so far has released well-known studies showing anti-cancer properties in resveratrol, a substance found in red grapes, and brassenin, a chemical in broccoli, cabbage and other cruciferous vegetables.
Researchers also have pinpointed a chemical in birch bark that could one day be a preventive, anti-melanoma drug, Farnsworth said.
It is such “hard science” that is raising the attention of corporations like Quaker Oats Co., which already promotes the health benefits of its oats-based cereals and Gatorade.
“The science is going to be the key,” said Gregory L. Paul, manager of clinical research for Quaker Oats and a recent attendee at a UIC conference on functional foods research.
Paul said he could envision a day when foods are considered almost like medicine, particularly if they are fortified with natural compounds that have been proven to fight disease.
“Without good science (behind the research), companies are not going to change their product portfolio,” he said.
Much of the work at UIC’s functional foods program originates at the field station, which began when the University of Illinois bought 10 acres from the Morton Arboretum in 1944 and eventually leased 30 more, said Totura. The station’s emphasis gradually shifted from plant physiology to medicinal plant research in the ’70s, Farnsworth said.
In the early days, the field station was called the drug and horticulture experiment station, and break-ins were a persistent problem.
“We had 40 or 50 marijuana plants stolen once,” said Farnsworth, adding that the station no longer studies illegal drugs. “Now people don’t know what the title means, so no one bothers us.”
The station is a kind of clearinghouse for growing, collecting, sifting, sorting and studying plants from around the world, explain Farnsworth and Totura, station supervisor and horticulturist.
Each year, the lab receives some 10,000 different plants from botanists working under research grants to collect and identify potential medicinal plants that could yield new drugs or dietary supplements.
On a recent visit, raw stalks from Indonesia, Ecuador, Colombia, Sudan and two dozen other countries were waiting to be ground and put into labeled plastic bags for future study.
Plants are also grown in a hothouse at the station, which currently is home to 2,000 pots of pachysandra, which are being grown in bulk to provide a large enough sample to study, Totura explained.
The 5-year-old functional foods program, a joint program with the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, studies natural ingredients, also called nutraceuticals, that help fight and prevent disease.
The program has researched how soy lowers the risk of heart disease, and how substances in vegetables called phytochemicals help the body fight carcinogens.
The research is important because it could go a long way toward studying the “monstrous claims” made by some in the dietary supplement business, Farnsworth said.
In 1995, Farnsworth was appointed by the president to the Commission on Dietary Supplement Labels, which will recommend how to present scientifically valid consumer information.
Farnsworth noted that a number of natural ingredients already have been shown in numerous studies to prevent or control health problems. Among them: echinacea, an immune system booster; garlic, to lower cholesterol; ginger, for seasickness; and feverfew, which has been shown to help migraine sufferers.
The problem with studying natural medicines is that few companies will invest millions of dollars if they cannot have exclusive rights to an ingredient that will help them recover their investment, said Farnsworth.
But he noted that promotion is a big part of the future of pharmacognosy.
“Look at what Scottie Pippen did (as a spokesman) for Ginsana,” said Farnsworth.
Meanwhile, the field station is not taking any chances on accidentally throwing away the next discovery of the century.
The station stores a whopping 25 years’ worth of dried plant clippings in the sagging loft of one of the dome-topped buildings–just in case a new disease or testing method crops up.
Totura acknowledges it might be tough to find one particular plant species among the seemingly haphazard stacks of burlap bags, but he clearly takes the “better to have it” approach to future research.
“You never know when you might need them, and they don’t go bad,” said Totura.
