Stephen F. Austin State University

The potentially lucrative research conducted at SFA's Center for Pharmaceutical Crops was appropriated $270,000 last week by the Senate Appropriations Committee and now awaits approval by the U.S. Senate.

Depending on funds from the Centers for Disease Control and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the center researches ways to extract compounds from native plants that can be used to create beneficial drugs.

"It's critical to the success of our center, at this point," said Dr. Scott Beasley, dean of the Arthur Temple College of Forestry and Agriculture. "We're hoping it (the research) will provide its own funding in the next three or four years, then we plan to make it on our own."

To make it on their own, Beasley and Dr. Shiyou Li, director of the center, plan to use the lab's findings to earn a profit in the pharmaceutical world.

Since coming to SFA from China in 1993, Li has studied Camptotheca, also known as happytree, which produces a fruit, that, though normally toxic, is used to create anti-cancer drugs. Growing naturally only in China, Li has studied places to grow the tree in Texas and other areas of the western United States.

Maps on his office wall show areas in Texas and the Southwest where the climate and soil match the needs of the happytree. Fossils found in Montana, two of which Li keeps in a cabinet in his lab, show imprints of the tiny, banana-like fruit of the tree, proof that Camptotheca once grew in America. Li and his colleagues have worked to develop the happytree, which normally grows to heights of 120 to 130 feet, into a shorter, more easily harvested shrub.

Other than developing the shrub-sized happytree, Li and his seven assistants, four of whom hold doctorates, have searched through plants and weeds native to East Texas, looking for cures. On a table in the center's lab, rectangular tin containers hold local weeds and ground-up flowers from native plants. Li's lab extracts compounds from the plants in a complex process, draining liquid from them and drying that into a powder. Some of the compounds are tested against viruses in the lab, while others are tested by the National Institutes of Health in Maryland.

"We try to find something useful from our own native plants," Li said. "Things in our back yards could change our lives."

In the back yards of East Texans, a common plant or tree yields shikimic acid, a compound crucial to the production of Tamilfu, an expensive drug used to combat avian flu. In the past, the acid has been extracted from star anise, an herb grown in Asia that smells like root beer and is used for Chinese cooking. The center has developed a way to extract the acid from a local plant or tree, but is keeping the matter secret while it tries to patent the process. Li said developing cures from native American plants is crucial to U.S. national security.

"These drugs are needed in this country, but we rely on other countries to produce it," he said. "With native plants, we could produce it ourselves. The final result is that we can produce shikimic acid very, very cheaply. The plants in East Texas alone could meet a global supply."

Li said the search for cures is like a light on top of a pole – the light shines out, illuminating the distance, but directly beneath the light is darkness. Li decided to search the darkness nearby, believing that many plants had been ignored while scientists combed rainforests and jungles for exotic flora.

"There is a need," Li said, adding that 65 percent of all cancer drugs, and 75 percent of all antiviral drugs come from plants.

"They came from nature, not from labs," he said. "They're not synthetic, they're natural."

Kyle Peveto's e-mail address is kpeveto@coxnews.com.