Gorilla Staple Adds Spice to New Drugs

Okunji has conducted research at Raskin's lab, where lucky visitors may leave with their own thimble-size jar of bronze liquid and a pinch of Aframomum seeds, from which "006" is derived.

"If you spread a thin layer of this substance on a paper-cut or an aching joint," said scientist Neb Ilic of Phytomedics Inc., a pharmaceutical company in Jamesburg, N.J., "there's a warm sensation for a brief time, then the inflammation disappears."

Ilic is a visiting scientist at Rutgers, which has patents pending on Aframomum-related discoveries. Rutgers has licensed those rights to Phytomedics, Raskin said.

Phytomedics has licensed cosmetic-only rights to Avon Products Inc. to manufacture skin-care products that contain Aframomum, said Tolo Fridlender, president of Phytomedics.

Avon scientist Xiaochun Luo said the cosmetic's development is based on what Luo calls Aframomum's superior ability to counteract skin irritation. Avon expects to release the products next spring or summer.

Phytomedics is not alone in its quest to market Aframomum. Another group of researchers, headed by Kenneth Kornman, president and chief scientific officer of Interleukin Genetics Inc., in Waltham, Mass., also has a patent pending on Aframomum applications. Kornman and partners in Interleukin Genetics conducted a clinical trial in humans, completed last summer, of Aframomum's ability to inhibit a component of the immune system known as cytokine modulators.

Cytokine modulators regulate inflammatory responses, which Interleukin Genetics attempted to slow down in its clinical trial. Based on early results, which the company is just beginning to review, said Kornman, "Aframomum might successfully be used to treat diseases with inflammation as their hallmarks, like cardiovascular conditions, arthritis, osteoporosis and Alzheimer's disease."

The clinical trial included blood tests for markers of inflammation, such as C-reactive protein, in volunteers treated with Aframomum or substances from other plants -- blueberry, blackberry and rose hips.

"Although it's too early to say for sure which plant had the most effect, inflammatory markers in people in the Aframomum group responded differently," said Kornman.

In earlier tests in cell cultures, Aframomum "at a very low concentration significantly inhibited the production of C-reactive protein," he said.

If Aframomum lives up to the current hopes for it, Okunji said, "we will owe a great debt to early native healers in Africa" -- and the wild lowland gorillas whose habits they perhaps observed and mimicked.