Birch bark's 'incredible' potential

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Posted on Mon, Apr. 17, 2006

Birch bark's 'incredible' potential

Extract may serve as 'medicine chest for the world'

By JOHN MYERS

Knight Ridder Newspapers

Imagine the treatment for some cancers growing in our forests. Or powerful

drugs for herpes, HIV or liver disease.

How about a natural source of biodegradable plastic, skin conditioner or

mosquito repellent? Or maybe a nontoxic pesticide or fungicide for gardens?

Behold the birch tree, the noble Northland native that someday might serve

as a medicine chest for the world.

A group of Duluth scientists is extracting a natural chemical from birch

bark that appears to hold incredible potential for fighting diseases. It has

been slow to develop, but the first commercial success may be near, part of

a global shift to more natural-based compounds and chemicals.

Later this month, a factory in Two Harbors, Minn., will begin making bulk,

processed birch bark pellets that laboratories can refine into betulin, the

active compound in birch that holds so much promise.

More importantly, because anyone can grind up birch bark, NaturNorth

Technologies also owns the patented process that extracts betulin from the

birch pellets.

Snow-white betulin from Northland birch could be a key component to a

pharmaceutical product within months, although researchers are legally

prevented from saying exactly what medicine or company.

But it gets better. Instead of chopping trees down to make medicines and

cosmetics, NaturNorth uses the bark from trees already cut down to make

paper. Tons of paper mill waste that is being burned in boilers will instead

be headed for Two Harbors to become part of a natural chemistry revolution.

" The cellulose used to make the paper is only 10 percent of the wood. Now it

is time to start using the other 90 percent, " said Pavel Krasutsky, head of

the Natural Resources Research Institute's chemical extractives laboratory

at the University of Minnesota Duluth. " Who knows, it may be much more

valuable than the paper. And we've been calling it waste. "

Birch bark is abundant, cheap, holds about 1,000 compounds and its betulin

" is nontoxic, it's versatile, it's very active and we can get the basic

material for almost free, " said Carlson, University of Minnesota

Duluth chemistry professor and a pioneer researcher of betulin. " The cost of

the base material already is offset by the papermaking process. So

everything else we get out of it is a winner. "

Carlson was among the first in the U.S. to document the properties of

betulin from birch, inspired by his walks in the woods where he saw birch

bark outlasting everything else on the forest floor.

It appeared betulin's first success would be a herpes virus medicine. Lab

and animal research showed betulin was incredibly effective at treating

herpes.

" One of the reasons we kept looking at birch is that the very first thing we

tried it on, herpes, it worked. That doesn't happen very often " in the

scientific world, Carlson said.

But because it wasn't synthetic, pharmaceutical companies balked. While you

can patent processes, you can't patent nature. So possibly the best medicine

for herpes remains unavailable a decade after it was discovered.

" It worked too well. A company could have taken our work, done all the

trials and spent all the money and then get undercut by someone else who

could use a slightly different process, " Carlson said. " The pharmaceutical

companies won't touch it because they can't make any money off of it. "

But betulin from birch showed too much promise to give up on, and Carlson,

Krasutsky and NRRI turned their attention to other products. Since then, its

uses have included plastic, food supplements and skin creams.

It's been known for centuries that birch has healing powers, although

scientists only recently discovered why. American Indians still hold birch

in almost sacred status for its practical, medicinal and spiritual

properties. Ancient Russians knew that wounds healed faster when birch bark

was applied.

According to the World Health Organization, nearly 70 percent of the Earth's

6.2 billion people still rely on plant-based traditional medicine to relieve

pain, heal wounds and prevent or cure diseases.

Of course, birch is only one source. The modern U.S. movement back to

natural sources for chemicals got a jump-start in the 1980s when it was

confirmed that taxol, an element found in California yew trees, was an

effective cancer drug. Taxol has become among the most successful

chemotherapy treatments for breast, ovarian and lung cancers.

In March, Clemson University food chemist Feng Chen reported that compounds

in African mahogany bark slow the growth of colon cancer cells. His research

was part of a National Institutes of Health effort to explore

pharmaceuticals from " traditional " medicinal plants and trees to treat

cancer -- the kind of medicine often shunned in past years as voodoo.

Inside birch bark, betulin is so complex a compound that it may be

impossible to replicate synthetically. That makes efforts to find all of

betulin's potential uses more attractive financially. The investment is more

likely to pay off if the product can't be easily copied.

And products with betulin as their base are nontoxic, while synthetic

compounds often have toxic side effects.

" Ninety-nine percent of the compounds rejected for drugs is because they are

so toxic, " Carlson said. " That's a problem we don't have. "

The National Institutes of Health are looking at betulin's properties to

battle melanoma, Krasutsky said.

The Duluth efforts aren't the only ones tapping into birch potential,

however. Europeans already are on the move.

One company in Russia is going bananas over birch. The firm already makes an

" antimycotic birch bark insole " for shoes, " health-improving " bed pillows of

milled birch bark, betulin for the food and pharmacological industries,

mosquito repellent made of birch bark tar, and floor and wall coverings made

of pressed milled birch bark.

In Russia, you can buy betulin-packed tablets as a defense against liver

damage. Alcoholics are encouraged to drop a couple of birch tablets before

their vodka binges, with betulin purportedly blocking the damage alcohol can

cause.

" There's big market for that in Russia, " Krasutsky joked. " But Americans

also drink. "

NRRI'S UKRAINIAN CONNECTION TAKES THE LEAD

Pavel Krasutsky's chemical extractives team has a sizable lead on American

competitors. The team already has 15 patents approved and 20 pending -- the

most of any research arm of the University of Minnesota, Krasutsky boasts.

Just don't try to pronounce the team members' names.

The fact the 10-person team is stacked with eight Ukrainians, including

Krasutsky, is not by chance. There's a much longer history of natural

chemistry in European nations that was lost, or never developed, in the U.S.

" Here, in this country, the god for the chemical industry was money. And

it's easier to make money from synthetic compounds, " Krasutsky said. " That

never meant they were a better source. In Europe, more people accept the

natural chemicals. "

Of course, some of the Ukrainians came to the University of Minnesota

Duluth's Natural Resources Research Institute's chemical extractives

laboratory to follow Krasutsky, their mentor, who came to NRRI a decade ago

from Kiev Polytechnic Institute.

" Pavel is probably the big reason all the Ukrainians are in the lab, " said

Carlson, the University of Minnesota Duluth chemistry professor who

helped found the extractives effort. " But it is true that Europeans are much

more open to homeopathic medicine in general, natural alternatives and

natural chemistry, than the U.S. has been. "

Some of the Ukrainians also fit the bill because they are chemical engineers

as well as chemists, which allows them to develop the processes to extract

chemicals, not just find their properties.

Moreover, it's simply not easy to find U.S.-born researchers, a trend

bemoaned by some local scientists.

" We just advertised for an organic chemist research position... we got 88

applications and I think only two or three were American, " Carlson said.

" Our (U.S.) students want to go where the money is, and it's not in this

kind of (academic) research. "

MONTEREY COUNTY HAROLD

http://www.montereyherald.com/mld/montereyherald/living/health/14360105.htm

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