New substances that may be used in the fight against cancer, but also for example with depression, will be the target of the search in plants, fungi and lichens of the Białowieża Forest, performed by scientists from Białystok University of Technology and the University of Mississippi in the US.
Students and scientists from these institutions are launching a joint research grant. The National Science Foundation in the United States has allocated 250 thousand dollars for this purpose. The grant will continue for three years.
"As part of this grant, researchers will isolate secondary metabolites from unique, and found in Poland, species of plants, fungi and lichens, to study their biological activity, including antitumour, antifungal, antimalarial and antibacterial properties" - announced Białystok University of Technology spokeswoman Dorota Sawicka in a press release.
The universities in Białystok and the US cooperate since 2013. Visitors from the USA, who came to Poland, have already visited the Białystok University of Technology laboratories. Lectures and field work in the Białowieża Forest began on Monday.
Białystok University of Technology has an off-campus Faculty of Forestry in Hajnówka on the edge of the Białowieża Forest. In 2013, specialized forest environment laboratory was established there. The laboratory is equipped with modern equipment for physico-chemical studies and botanical analyses of the Białowieża Forest natural resources, such as fungi or lichens.
"Our main goal is to find an anticancer drug from plants and fungi. Another bane of our times are diseases of the nervous system: depression, schizophrenia, for which there are currently no good medicines, and again plants give us a good chance of finding an effective cure" - said Dr. Jordan Zjawiony, a professor from the Department of BioMolecular Sciences, School of Pharmacy of the University of Mississippi.
He added that the Białowieża Forest is famous for its rich flora, which is still relatively little known. "We want to study it for future uses and search for potential natural medicines that have fewer side effects than synthetic drugs. We have high hopes for these studies. We already have preliminary, promising results of previous work. The future is also joint publications and patents, under the cooperation agreement between the universities" - said Dr. Jordan Zjawiony.
As part of the grant, students and researchers from the US will visit in the Białowieża Forest every year for 6 weeks. The work will be carried out in the field and in laboratories.
One of the Polish coordinators of the research project, vice-rector of Białystok University of Technology, Prof. Grażyna Łaska emphasised that one of the effects of the grant will be creating conditions for cooperation between the universities. One of the assumptions of the grant is a group of so-called mentors who will work with students.
Białowieża Forest is home to 8.5 thousand species of insects, 250 species of birds, 54 species of mammals, more than a thousand species of vascular plants, 200 species of mosses, 300 species of lichens and about 3 thousand species of fungi.
PAP - Science and Scholarship in Poland
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