<head><style>body{font-size:10pt;font-family:arial,sans-serif;background-color:#ffffff;color:black;}p{margin:0px;}</style></head><body>This has been out a while, and am sending it because I don't recall seeing it on the list serve before:<br>http://www.sunjournal.com/state/story/939204<br><h1><a href="http://www.sunjournal.com/state/story/939204" class="active">Maine pine needles yield valuable Tamiflu material</a></h1>
<div class="byline">By Clarke Canfield, Associated Press Writer</div> <div class="submitted">Published Nov 08, 2010 12:00 am | Last updated Nov 08, 2010 12:20 am</div>
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<a href="http://www.sunjournal.com/files/imagecache/story_large/2010/11/08/Tamiflu%20Pine%20Needles_Phel.jpg" class="lightbox-processed" rel="lightshow[photo]" title="Doctors Ray Fort Jr., right, and Barbara Cole, center, with grad student Nilmini Gedivinne, left, stand in Orono with pine needles on Sept. 30. They hope to give the waning forest products industry a shot in the arm .The raw material used to make the most widely used antiviral flu medicine comes from the fruit of small trees native to China. It turns out it could also come from pine trees in Maine's backyard. University of Maine researchers say they have found an easy way to extract from pine tree needles a material known as shikimic acid used in the high-demand drug Tamiflu."><img src="http://www.sunjournal.com/files/imagecache/small/2010/11/08/Tamiflu%20Pine%20Needles_Phel.jpg" alt="" title="" class="imagecache imagecache-small" height="140" width="200"></a> <div class="photocaption">
<p>Doctors Ray Fort Jr., right, and Barbara Cole, center, with grad
student Nilmini Gedivinne, left, stand in Orono with pine needles on
Sept. 30. They hope to give the waning forest products industry a shot
in the arm .The raw material used to make the most widely used antiviral
flu medicine comes from the fruit of small trees native to China. It
turns out it could also come from pine trees in Maine's backyard.
University of Maine researchers say they have found an easy way to
extract from pine tree needles a material known as shikimic acid used in
the high-demand drug Tamiflu.</p> <div class="photocredit">
- Michael C. York/Associated Press </div>
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<p>PORTLAND (AP) — A little-known raw material used in the most widely
used antiviral flu medicine comes from the fruit of trees native to
China. It turns out it also comes from pine trees in Maine's backyard.</p>
<p>Researchers at the University of Maine at Orono say they've found a
new and relatively easy way to extract shikimic acid — a key ingredient
in the drug Tamiflu — from pine tree needles.</p>
<p>Shikimic acid can be removed from the needles of white pine, red pine
and other conifer trees simply by boiling the needles in water, said
chemistry professor Ray Fort Jr. Additional testing is needed, and it
remains to be seen if there's demand for the product or if the process
can applied commercially in the private sector, he said.</p>
<p>But the extracted acid could be valuable because Tamiflu is the
world's most widely used antiviral drug for treating swine flu, bird flu
and seasonal influenza. The major source of shikimic acid now is the
star anise, an unusual star-shaped fruit that grows on small trees
native to China.</p>
<p>Swiss drug giant Roche Holding AG holds the patent on Tamiflu, which is produced by Roche's manufacturing partners.</p>
<p>If Fort's research is successful, pine trees could serve as another
source of shikimic acid to manufacture Tamiflu while also providing
Maine's forest products industry a new source of revenue. The research
has been funded from a variety of sources, including the Maine
Technology Institute, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the National
Science Foundation and the university's chemistry department.</p>
<p>"Our thought is we can probably get shikimic acid a lot cheaper than
they're currently getting it elsewhere because the pine needles are just
sitting there," Fort said. "It may turn out this isn't economically
useful if they are successful in coming up with a large-scale synthesis
of their own. That's the chance you take."</p>
<p>This isn't the first attempt at finding alternative sources for shikimic acid.</p>
<p>Five years ago, Biolyse Pharma Corp. in St. Catharines, Ontario,
devised a sophisticated chemical process to extract shikimic acid from
pine needles. The project came during the avian flu scare in 2005 with
the goal of stockpiling the acid in case there was a worldwide pandemic
and more Tamiflu had to be manufactured on short notice, said Claude
Mercur, whose family owns the company.</p>
<p>When the Canadian government failed to endorse the idea of having
Biolyse manufacture Tamiflu in a national emergency, the company
contacted Swiss drug giant Roche Holding AG, which holds the patent on
Tamiflu, about buying the shikimic acid, Mercur said. But Roche wasn't
interested and Biolyse dropped the project when no other buyers could be
found, he said.</p>
<p>Biolyse hasn't been involved in shikimic acid since, and Mercur is
doubtful there is a market for the acid, given the diminished demand for
Tamiflu these days. Roche Holding expects 2010 Tamiflu sales to be a
little over $1 billion, down from about $3.3 billion in 2009.</p>
<p>It's also hard to compete with China on price, he said.</p>
<p>"We cannot compete against Chinese costs, especially products produced outside the main population centers," he said.</p>
<p>According to various scientific studies, strong demand for Tamiflu in
recent years put pressure on the supply of shikimic acid, with a
shortage of star anise viewed as a major production problem in producing
Tamiflu.</p>
<p>Star anise has been used for centuries for a licorice-like flavor in
Chinese foods and in liqueurs such as Pernod. But most of the supply
these days goes to provide shikimic acid for making Tamiflu.</p>
<p>Roche Holding said in an e-mail that it also uses a synthetic version
of shikimic acid to lessen its reliance on star anise. The company said
it has an ample supply of Tamiflu for the current flu season.</p>
<p>Scientists have known for decades that virtually all plant life
contains shikimic acid, Fort said. But what hasn't been so clear is how
much of the acid was contained in Maine's pine trees and how easy — or
difficult — it was to extract.</p>
<p>The latest research has determined that white and red pines — and
spruce and tamarack trees to a lesser extent — store enough of the acid
to make it worthwhile to extract, Fort said. It's as easy as boiling the
needles in water, like boiling tea in tea bags he said.</p>
<p>Fort envisions loggers stripping pine needles off harvested tree
limbs, boiling them in large containers and filtering out the residue,
all while working in the woods. The leftover fluid, containing the
shikimic acid, would be further processed at a mill or some other plant
and sold on the open market, he said.</p>
<p>Testing so far has taken place in a laboratory and additional
large-scale testing is needed before the process is passed on to a
private company for commercial development, Fort said. The goal is to
eventually make pine needles economically valuable for Maine's forestry
industry.</p>
<p>"We're looking at maybe one more year in the laboratory," Fort said.</p>
<p>The research was presented in August at an American Chemical Society
national meeting in Boston and reported in the Portland Press Herald.
Fort plans to have the results published in a scientific journal.</p>
<p>Other researchers are also looking at ways to utilize new sources to make Tamiflu.</p>
<p>In a study published last fall, scientists wrote that growing demand
for Tamiflu has put pressure on the supply of shikimic acid.</p>
<p>"As a result, chemists worldwide, including ourselves, have explored
the possibility of using other alternative raw materials for the
synthesis of the drug," the researchers wrote.</p>
<p>At the University of Arkansas, recent studies have looked at
extracting shikimic acid from sweetgum trees with the focus of adding
value to the trees before they are shipped off to biomass energy plants.</p>
<p>Julie Carrier, a professor who headed the research, thinks shikimic
acid could have other commercial applications beyond Tamiflu down the
road. For instance, maybe it could be used to kill or inhibit the growth
of microorganisms on foods.</p>
<p>"These natural molecules could have a host of other applications,"
she said. "We're in a period of growth in these natural markets, and I'm
sure shikimic acid is going to find applications we aren't even
dreaming of right now."</p>
<p>Fort said he's aware of other work to come up other sources of shikimic acid.</p>
<p>But he also thinks pine needles could be a cheap supply source
because they're so abundant — Maine is the nation's most heavily
forested state with nearly 90 percent of the land covered by trees — and
easy to process.</p>
<p>The price of shikimic acid in recent times has ranged from $135 to
$315 per pound, depending on the imminence of a flu outbreak, he said.
he hasn't come up with any cost estimates of shikimic acid from pine
needles.</p>
<p>"It's just harvesting what Mother Nature grows," he said.</p><br> </body><pre>
Robin Alton Suggs
MoonBranch Botanicals
5294 Yellow Creek Road
Robbinsville, North Carolina 28771
USA
Telephone: 828.479.2788
Email: moonbranch@earthlink.net
Websites:
www.moonbranch.com & www.localharvest.org/store/M16074
Member:
Appalachian Sustainable Agriculture Project; Farm Partner
Green Products Alliance
North Carolina Consortium on Natural Medicines
North Carolina Goodness Grows/NCDA&CS
Southwestern North Carolina RC&D Council
United Plant Savers
If people let government decide what foods they eat and what medicines they take, their bodies will soon be in as sorry a state as are the souls of those who live under tyranny.
- Thomas Jefferson
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