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"An effective cure will need to reach people around the world, and by leveraging traditional African ethnomedicine, we're making progress toward a cure with accessibility in mind."

"This Croton species was chosen for study because it has a long history, along with related African plants, of use in ethnomedicine. For thousands of years, people in Cameroon and neighboring countries have relied on traditional, plant-based medicine from healers to treat a variety of illnesses, from cancer to diabetes and, more recently, even HIV. Our collaboration with the Wistar Institute over and above scientific discovery has also provided us with human development capacity building," says Dr. Ntie-Kang.

Building on work from similar species of plants used in African ethnomedicine, the research team investigated whether the medicinally active compounds in C. oligandrus could be latency-reversing agents, or LRAs, substances that reactivate latent HIV.

“In these pandemic times, for all people who have family in the hospital, maybe we can’t see them, but maybe we can bring them the traditional foods of our family,” said Jennifer Andrulli, a Yup’ik professor at the University of Alaska Anchorage who teaches applications of ethnomedicine and traditional foodways.

He has a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, in nutritional ethnomedicine, a field that examines how various cultures and ethnicities use natural products for health purposes.