A team of Dominican, US, Spanish and Canadian researchers are working together on a project to find a cure for cancer. The scientists say they have identified plants of the Asteraceae family endemic to the southwestern mountains of Sierra de Bahoruco that possess high-level anti-cancer molecules. The finding could prevent the death of millions around the world from breast, kidney, cervix, prostate, lung, colon and skin cancer.
The group of experts, made up of chemistry professors and headed by Quírico Castillo, has already taken steps to register the finding.
“We want to inform, with great enthusiasm and pride, that our research team has applied for the invention patent before the ONAPI of a new species endemic to the island,” Castillo said upon making the announcement. ONAPI is the National Office of Industrial Property.
Research has been ongoing for years, and now the lead researchers — Quírico A. Castillo of the state Autonomous University of Santo Domingo (UASD), chemical crystallographer Lukasz Wojtas of the University of South Florida, Mehdi Keramane of the McMaster University of Canada, and José Manuel Padrón of the Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria Spain — made the announcement.
The research was partially supported by the Ministry of Higher Education, Science and Technology (Mescyt) and its Fondocyt Program (grants 2009-2C3-016 and 2013-1D4-003) that have been underway since before 2009.
The effort is a collaboration of years of chemists and other scientists from UASD, and of the Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria in Spain; of BioLab, Instituto Universitario de Bio-Orgánica Antonio González (IUBO-AG), Centro de Investigaciones Biomédicas de Canarias (CIBICAN), Universidad de La Laguna Biointerfaces Institute, of the McMaster University, Engineering Technology in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada; Florida Center of Excellence for Drug Discovery and Innovation (CDDI-USF) and Department of Chemistry, of the University of South Florida, among others.
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Listin Diario
UASD
Diario Libre
6 May 2019