From the earliest of times, ancient cultures
indigenous people have used plants for medicinal
purposes. If you come around here, what you're
going to see here is another herb which you
probably don't know about but it's the Cuban
version of Oregano, it's called Cuban Oregano.
The leaves have been used by my mom and my
grandma as a seasoning when they cook, and
as you can see here it's used in South America
for sore throat, for treating coughs, congestion
and so on. So here you can see a sugar cane,
native to India, grown widely in the U.S.,
and also in South America, has been used as
a topical antiseptic. There are other plants,
for example, this plant here, it's called
a Madagascar Perriwinkle and it has actually
provided us with two anti-cancer drugs, vincristine
and vinblastine, and as you can see here,
you know these compounds who are isolated
and have been developed into prescription
anti-cancer drugs.
About fifty thousand years
ago when ancient man was eating a lot of plants,
plant-based diet, roots and tubers and berries,
our genes expect plant-based diet. If you
don't get that diet and you're moving towards
more meat based, "inflammatory" based diet,
then you're actually cheeting yourself from
the wonderful benefits you can get from fruits
and vegetables. The color in their diet, many
American's diet, is catchup or mustard, not
that that's wrong, but the colors I would
want to see in your diet should be berries
and fruits and vegetables and spices and herbs.
Most of the world's population do not have
access to a doctor or to medical care in the
way that we regard western medicine, and therefore
people in other parts of the world are always
using plants. My interets are in evaluating
these folklore, these medicines, that have
been used traditionally and to put a modern
research focus and find out is this really
true, if so, what's the active ingredient
in that plant that's giving it it's medicinal
properties. After spending five years at UCLA
I started looking elsewhere for new challenges,
and in looking at different schools URI emerged
from among many as a very small, unique, beautiful
school where I could be in a great location
but at the same time be in a school in the
College of Pharmacy which has a very rich
history in natural product chemistry. My lab
is now fully-functional. I have a great team
of grad students and post-doc fellow. We have
undergrad students who volunteer in the lab.
So it's a perfect picture to me. I want to
take our school into the next generation,
I want to bring in the best, the brightest
grad students, teach the brightest undergraduate
students and inspire them to continue the
work that I am doing today so that they can
be the next generation of scientists.