A research consortium led by the South African Herbal Science and Medicine Institute at the University of the Western Cape (UWC) and the School of Medicine at Missouri University (MU), has just won R24,5 million from the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM), at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the United States. Prof. Quinton Johnson (UWC) and Prof. William Folk (MU), will direct The International Center for Indigenous Phytotherapy Studies (TICIPS), consisting of scientists, medical doctors and traditional healers.
TICIPS will be based at UWC and work with partners at the Nelson Mandela Medical School (University Kwazulu-Natal), the Institute for Infectious Diseases and Molecular Medicine (University of Cape Town) and the Medical Research Council (MRC). Scientists from the University of Texas (Medical Branch), Georgetown University, Mississippi University and the Missouri Botanical Gardens will be led by Missouri University, to partner with South African collaborators in this world-class center.
The UWC-MU research team competed with the best science and medicine groups including Harvard, John’s Hopkins, Columbia, Mount Sinai, California (San Francisco), Bastyr, Washington, North Carolina (Chapel Hill) and Maryland. All these competitors proposed to collaborate with partners in China, Japan, Singapore, India and Korea, studying their ancient systems of medicine. The UWC-MU consortium was the only one to focus on African herbal medicines and healing systems.
TICIPS will investigate African indigenous medicines for AIDS, secondary infections and immune modulation. The central mission for TICIPS is a) to create a collaborative environment of resp