Ethiopian medicinal plants show promise in fighting cervical cancer

This international collaboration involves experts from Georgia State University and Georgia State’s Perimeter College in the US, Addis Ababa University in Ethiopia, and the Winship Cancer Center at Emory University in the US.

The study, led by Paulos Yohannes, a chemistry professor and associate dean for research at Georgia State University’s Perimeter College, focuses on the medicinal benefits of plants native to Ethiopia.

Yohannes, participating under the Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship Program, emphasised the importance of natural products in African traditional medicine.

"There are many medicinal plants that have been used by traditional healers for centuries. At this moment, preliminary studies have shown that we are working with plant extracts that exhibit anticancer activities," he noted.

The research aims to contribute to the reduction of cervical cancer deaths which according to the WHO, is the fourth most common cancer in women globally, with approximately 660,000 new cases and around 350,000 deaths reported in 2022.

The Ethiopian team, led by Professor Ermias Dagne, who has over 45 years of experience in the chemistry of medicinal plants, extracts materials from these plants. These extracts are then sent to Georgia State as crude extracts or isolated pure compounds to test their effectiveness in combating disease.

Georgia State Regents’ Professor and Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar Binghe Wang highlighted two crucial aspects of the project.

"The first is to assess these extracts or purified compounds for biological activity, starting with cell culture experiments. In searching for anticancer compounds, we look for those that exhibit potent cytotoxicity against cancer cells. Once the activity is confirmed, there is a set of spectroscopic experiments that we conduct to confirm the structures of the compounds," Wang explained.