Antiviral Phenolic Compounds From Bamboo and Other Woody Sources.

[NNadir]

I came across an interesting paper this evening, which looks at some well known molecules from the pyrolysis of wood and bamboo and their activity as anti-viral compounds.

The paper is here: Antiviral Activity of Phenolic Derivatives in Pyroligneous Acid from Hardwood, Softwood, and Bamboo (Wantanabe et al, ACS Sustainable Chem. Eng., 2018, 6 (1), pp 119–126)

Here's a cute graphic from the paper:



And here's the opening texts:

Pyroligneous acids (PAs), also called wood vinegar, pyroligneous liquor, pyrolysis bio-oil, or liquid smoke, are the crude condensate of smoke produced through carbonization(1, 2) and consist of a pyrolyzate of cellulose, hemicelluloses, and lignin. Wood and bamboo PAs are complex mixtures of water, alcohols, organic acids, esters, aldehydes, ketones, phenolics, and nitrogen compounds.(3-5) Acetic acid is the primary component of wood and bamboo PAs.(6)

Wood and bamboo PAs are used for sterilization, food additives, smoke flavoring, and antimicrobial agents. Furthermore, it has been shown that bamboo PA exerts a promotional effect on the germination and radicle growth of some types of seeds, e.g., lettuce.(7, 8) Interestingly, the chemical composition of PAs depends on the original wood species. For example, the chemical composition of moso bamboo (Phyllostachys pubescens) PA is different from that of madake bamboo (Phyllostachys bambusoides) despite their close phylogenetic relationship.(7) In addition, preparation of crude PA critically affects its efficacy. Regarding its effect on the regulation of germination and growth, it is known that bamboo PA collected at temperatures of up to 250 °C promotes radicle and hypocotyl growth, whereas bamboo PA collected at temperatures from 250 to 400 °C inhibits their growth.(8, 9)

Previous studies have shown that PA has the potential to modulate immune responses.(10, 11) For example, cresol derived from Moso bamboo PA inhibits inflammasome activation through reactive oxygen species production and inactivation of the protein kinase C-α/δ.(10) Furthermore, wood PA derived from sawtooth oak inhibits the phosphorylation of the signal transducer STAT3 and, thus, shows anti-inflammatory activity...(11)

The authors heat lignin from wood to obtain a number of pyrolytic products from the decomposition of lignin, a by product of the paper and pulp industries that is sometimes regarded as a waste material, although the use of lignin and lignin derived compounds is being increasingly utilized for a number of applications.

The structures of the molecules obtained is nothing incredibly remarkable, with many of the compounds being well known to most organic chemists:



But the authors look at them in a new way, investigating their properties as anti-viral agents against a disease causing virus, the encephalomyocarditis virus which causes a febrile disease.

They assay its activity agains the RNA of the virus:



And find these interesting results for the compounds listed above.



I'm not sure that many of these molecules or any will make it to clinical trials, and as their structure is well known, I can imagine difficulties in the patent space, but this is an interesting case utilizing some very simple chemistry, as opposed to the more complex chemistry that goes into far more sophisticated anti-virals, chemistry with which I have been familiar professionally.

It's pretty cool I think.

Have a pleasant Sunday.

[KT2000]

1. my guess is they will

make it to clinical trials and if they show success, they will be copied by pharma companies and sold for high prices. They will then have the government issue warnings against using anything but the pharmaceuticals.

Read a book by a woman who was a patent attorney for a firm that specialized in pharmaceuticals. Her research showed her that most pharma products were derived from nature. She went to medical school and now has a practice that uses plants (supplements, tinctures, etc.) instead of pharma where possible.

[Anon-C]

3. Does your friend have a website or otherwise publicize her practice?

WRT the article, can these processes even be patented? Their promise would seem to be a fairly low-tech, sustainable industry to produce effective anti-viral agents apart from "Big Pharma".

[KT2000]

5. it was a book

I reviewed. Holistic Health for Adolescents, by Nada Milosavljevic, M.D., J.D., W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10110, ©2016, 258 pp., Softcover, $21.95

She started a program to help young people cope with their anxieties, depression (not severe type though) etc. in schools in the Boston area as I recall. I thought she had a great idea because so many teens suffer in silence.

[Anon-C]

6. Thank you! I am earning my Holistic Health Practitioner certification and this is right up my alley!

[KT2000]

9. that's great!

I think you will enjoy this book - and good luck!

[NNadir]

4. I have worked in various aspects of the pharmaceutical industry for more than 30 years.

Most people have a very cartoonish view of what goes into making a drug.

It's not at all folk medicine. Medicinal chemists and ethnobotonists study folk medicine, and do so with good reason, but if folk medicine was all that great, life expectancy would have been in the high seventies in the 15th century and it wasn't.

My Grandmother died at the age of 39, with seven children under the age of 11, because of an infection that might have been cured today with a simple trip to the drug store. No folk medicine person could have saved her life.

If you eat a digitalis plant to cure your heart disease, it may kill you, since digitalis is a toxin and you have no control on the growing conditions under which the plant is grown.

If your physician prescribes digitalis for your heart condition, your life may be saved, because the digitalis in most cases has been managed under strictly regulated conditions; and it it's found to have not been so managed, the FDA has the power to shut the operation down.

Several years back, L-Tryptophan sold as a supplement under DSHEA laws, owing to the lack of regulation to which "supplements" are not subject. Regrettably, I had occasion to deal with some DSHEA people in the early 1990's, and frankly the sleaze and irresponsibility of these people startled me, and I'm seldom startled by moral malfeasance any more at my age. This is a common amino acid, commonly found in milk, but the DSHEA people - unregulated as they were - managed to kill people with it.

Post-epidemic eosinophilia myalgia syndrome associated with L-Tryptophan

I know that lives have been saved owing to my efforts and the efforts of many thousands of colleagues. Not everything I've seen in this industry has been ethically satisfying, but I can say that I'm extremely proud of the work I did in the early 1990's which made me a foot soldier in the war on AIDS. I think millions of people who might have died in that effort lived as a result of the hard work, the long nights, the frustration, the persistence of hundreds of thousands of highly trained and highly educated ethical pharmaceutical workers.

Not everything I've seen in my career has been pretty, but overall, I'm pleased to have been associated with the pharmaceutical industry, one of the bright points of having lived.

If you think it was easy, think again. It goes way beyond the sleepless nights of an academic career, although certainly that much is involved. The difficulty and the strain and the sense of responsibility goes on and on and on. I was on the phone with manufacturing plants while my two year old son was in surgery because if I wasn't on the phone, people might die.

That's the stakes my friend.

Now, it is true that in the case mentioned in the OP, that the failure to possess a strong patent - a composition of matter patent - will weaken the chances of one of these compounds being developed into a drug, as venal as they may be, but I assure you that if one them becomes a drug, it will because someone really, really, really cared.

A lot of people in the pharmaceutical industry really, really, really care; I know many of them personally.

[Anon-C]

7. It's pro forma to criticize western medicine and big pharma as a part of it...

...until you need an invasive surgery to save your life. Happy that the good people you know are there, wish I could send them reinforcements!

[KT2000]

8. Corporations

are not the same as the scientist etc. that bring a drug to market. In fact, their goals are very different. It is like the scientists who work at the EPA - they care, they are careful but it is the people at the top who maintain the power. Research can be destroyed, or hidden when it does not conform to financial goals. People who speak out about the dangers of a certain drug have found their careers and life in general destroyed, and that has happened - in many walks of like.

The L-tryptophan debacle was a mistake in manufacturing in Japan and that was discovered early on. Other manufacturers were making a safe product but the ban on all L-tryptophan lasted years. It is a competitor for serotonin re-uptake drugs. It was suspected that was the reason for the ban to last so long.

I am well aware of digitalis as I take digoxin, a drug that was first formulated in the late 1800s. When I started taking it, the cost was low. One company is now supposedly the only manufacturer which is the excuse for the drastic increase in cost. There will come a day when I will no longer be able to afford it, then it won't be saving my life anymore.

The use of plants for medicinal purposes is more sophisticated than folk medicine now. There are several publications that people can read to learn about what has been tested and the results.

I am not suggesting that people are not committed to their work in the pharmaceutical field, but there are problems. I will maintain my cynicism especially when those products are not available to everyone, even the most needy and sick.

[NNadir]

11. Well, then, I suggest you don't take any pharmaceutical products ever, if there are "problems."

It's my profession. I think I understand any "problems" there are, and compared to say, epidemics that used to kill as much as a third of the human population in a single outbreak, I regard the "problems" as trivial.

And again, I might know something about it, since I live and work there.

I've worked my ass off, and perhaps you think I should feel overwhelming guilt at wanting to be paid for what I do - and I'm hardly independently wealthy - but as a person who has spent thousands of hours in the primary scientific literature as part of my work, I really haven't seen any worthwhile publications - and my life is very much involved with reading publications in the primary scientific literature, out which the OP here comes - that suggest that taking medicinal plants as opposed to controlled pharmaceuticals is a safe or sane practice.

But increasingly we live in a world dominated by libertarian values - as much as I regret it and as much as I think rugged individualism is garbage - and we have to live, or die, because people object to vaccines and pharmaceutical products.

Eat medicinal plants at your own risk if you wish. I would never agree to let anyone I love do so if I had the power to do so, but to each his or her own.

I'll die soon enough myself; I'm old, but I would have been ancient in the 1930's, and the fact that I've lived this long is because I've taken a scientific approach to my health.

[KT2000]

12. I am not going

to engage in a personal pissing contest. I kept my comments to issues.

[MLAA]

2. Agree, it is cool 🙂

[appalachiablue]

10. K & R