ABC Announces Recipients
of Botanical Excellence Awards
(Austin, TX, March 5, 2009) The 4th Annual American Botanical Celebration
and Awards Ceremony will take place tonight in Anaheim, California. The
Celebration is ABC’s way of thanking many of its Sponsor Members who help fund
many of ABC’s nonprofit educational programs. The evening will begin with a
cocktail reception and feature the presentation of the annual ABC Botanical
Excellence Awards, honoring individuals and companies with a great impact on the
present and future of the herbal medicine movement. The ABC event is part of the
annual Natural Products Expo West trade show and Nutracon scientific
conference.
The recipient of the ABC James A. Duke Excellence in Botanical Literature
Award is David J. Mabberley, PhD, for his Mabberley's Plant-Book: A Portable
Dictionary of Plants, Their Classifications, and Uses, 3rd edition (Cambridge
University Press, 2008). The recipient of the ABC Norman R. Farnsworth
Excellence in Botanical Research Award is Prof. Ikhlas A. Khan, PhD, of the
University of Mississippi. And the recipient of the ABC Varro E. Tyler
Commercial Investment in Phytomedicinal Research Award is Indena, the world’s
leading extractor of standardized botanical extracts.
ABC’s James A. Duke Excellence in Botanical Literature Award
This year, the James A. Duke Excellence in Botanical Literature Award will be
presented to Dr. Mabberley, author of Mabberley's Plant-Book: A Portable
Dictionary of Plants, Their Classifications, and Uses, 3rd
edition.
This award, created in 2006 by ABC in honor of ABC co-founding
Board of Trustees member James A. Duke, PhD, is given annually to a book with a
copyright of the previous year (in this case, 2008), or to a literature service,
that ABC believes provides a significant contribution to literature in the
fields of botany, ethnobotany, phytomedicine, and/or other disciplines related
to medicinal plants. Consisting of 1040 pages, Mabberley's
Plant-Book, 3rd edition, contains over 24,000 entries and claims
information on every family and genus of seed-bearing plant, including
gymnosperms, ferns, and club mosses.1
Each past entry has been updated to incorporate the most
recent literature available, and over 1650 new entries (including entries on
ecologically and economically significant mosses) have been added.
First
published in 1987 as The Plant-Book: A Portable Dictionary of the Higher
Plants and then in 1997 as The Plant-Book: A Portable Dictionary of the
Vascular Plants, this is the first time that ABC has awarded the JAD
Botanical Literature Award to a 3rd edition. This improved edition is
significantly different from previous editions, which were already widely used
and referenced and considered internationally to be indispensable to plant
cultivators and researchers. Mabberley’s Plant Book promises in its introduction
to continue to be among the most practical and authoritative botanical books
available, and it proves true to its word.
“Few, if any, books get as
much use in Steven Foster’s and my library as previous editions of Mabberley.
Additionally, this new edition includes the best explanation of the taxonomic
shifts resulting from the introduction of molecular data—what I call the new
taxonomy—for lay plant enthusiast,” wrote Dr. Duke in a review of the book for
HerbalGram 82.2 The
author, Dr. David J. Mabberley, is an internationally renowned botanist. He has
held prestigious positions at locations such as Wadham College and the Oxford
Botanic Gardens and Herbaria of Oxford University, the University of Washington
Botanic Gardens in Seattle, and currently the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew in
Richmond, Surrey, UK. There he serves as keeper of the herbarium, library, art
and archives. This award is particularly timely since the world-renowned Kew
Gardens celebrates its 250th anniversary in 2009.
Previous recipients of
the James A. Duke Award are The Essential Guide to Herbal Safety
(Churchill Livingstone, 2005) by Simon Y. Mills and Kerry Bone in 2006,
Medicinal Spices: A Handbook of Culinary Herbs, Spices, Spice Mixtures and
Their Essential Oils (Medpharm, CRC Press, 2006) by Eberhard Teuscher in
2007, and Google Books in 2008 for their making publicly available many classic
titles in the areas of Eclectic Medicine and related subjects of interest to the
herbal community.
ABC’s Norman R. Farnsworth Excellence in Botanical Research Award
This year the Norman R. Farnsworth Excellence in Botanical Research Award
will be presented to Ikhlas A. Khan, PhD, professor of pharmacognosy at the
University of Mississippi.
The Norman R. Farsnworth Excellence in Botanical Research Award is named for
ABC co-founding Board of Trustee, Prof. Norman R. Farnsworth, PhD. ABC presents
this award each year to a person or institution who has made significant
contributions to botanical and/or pharmacognostic research.
Dr. Khan is a man of many titles. At the University of Mississippi’s National
Center for Natural Products Research alone he is the director of the Food and
Drug Administration (FDA) Center of Excellence, a research professor, and a
professor in the Department of Pharmacognosy. Additionally, he is the director
for Sino-US TCM Research Center, director for the Center for Research of Indian
Systems of Medicine (CRISM), research professor and coordinator for the Natural
Products Research at the Center for Water and Wetlands Research, and an adjunct
professor for the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
Born in Amroha, India, Dr. Khan received his bachelors in chemistry in 1980
and his masters in organic chemistry in 1982 (both from the Aligarh Muslim
University in Aligarh, India). In 1987, he received his doctorate in pharmacy
from the Institute for Pharmaceutical Biology in Munich, West Germany, where he
studied under the renowned Prof. H. Wagner. He joined the University of
Mississippi in 19881989 and then completed postdoctoral studies at Swiss Federal
Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich. In 1992, he re-joined the University of
Mississippi and currently resides in Oxford, Mississippi.
Dr. Khan’s primary research interests include standardization of herbal
products and the improvement of product quality and safety, particularly through
the development of new analytical methods. He has authored or co-authored over
300 original publications and is invited to speak at events and conferences
around the world. He also serves as co-editor of Planta Medica and a
foreign editor for Journal of Traditional Chinese Medicine.
Dr. Khan serves on several important professional committees. This includes
committees for the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine
(NCCAM) in Washington, DC, an expert panel of the United States Pharmacopoeia
(USP) committee, an expert advisory committee of the Natural Health Directorate
of Health Canada, and the Advisory Board of ABC.
Dr. Khan speaks 4 languages: English, German, Hindi and Urdu. He is the
recipient of several awards, such as the Cumberland Pharmaceuticals Inc. Faculty
Research Award for the years 2007-2008 for the School of Pharmacy, the
International Society for Horticultural Science (ISHS) Award for Meritorious
Service in 2005, the Researcher of the Year Award in the National Center for
Natural Products Research in 2001, and now the well-deserved 2009 Norman
Farnsworth Excellence in Botanical Research Award from ABC.
“I was really surprised,” said Dr. Khan. “I was not expecting it so soon in
my career. I am honored and humbled to receive this prestigious award named for
Norman Farnsworth, whom I admire and respect and who is legendary in the field
of pharmacognosy and natural products. It is also a very personal honor to
follow behind last year’s recipient, Prof. Hildebert Wagner, under whom I
received my doctorate. This is certainly a high point in my career.”
ABC’s Varro E. Tyler Commercial Investment in Phytomedicinal Research
This year the Varro E. Tyler Commercial Investment in Phytomedicinal Research
Award will be presented to Indena, SpA, Milan, Italy.
The Varro E. Tyler Commercial Investment in Phytomedicinal Research Award was
named after the late Varro E. Tyler, PhD, former dean of the college of pharmacy
at Purdue University and executive vice-president of academic affairs at Purdue.
A leading authority in botanical medicines, he was the principle author of
several editions of a famous textbook on pharmacognosy, formerly used in all
colleges of pharmacy in the United States, plus Herbs of Choice: The
Rational Use of Phytomedicinals (Haworth Press, 1994 and revisions). Dr.
Tyler was also a Trustee of ABC. That Indena is this year’s recipient is
especially appropriate considering that among his few commercial affiliations,
Dr. Tyler was a consultant and spokesperson for Indena after his retirement in
the late 1990s.
Indena SpA is the world’s leading manufacturer of standardized and
scientifically researched plant extracts. The privately-owned company has
researched and developed extracts and active principles from medicinal plants
for nearly 90 years. It was also instrumental in introducing standardized herbal
extracts to the American dietary supplement market 25 years ago.
Indena’s mission is to identify, develop, and produce active principals from
plants, for use in the pharmaceutical, health food, and cosmetics industries.3
The company’s considerable success stems from the research it conducts at its
personal research center in Settala, Italy involving the screening of medicinal
plants for pharmacological benefits, the identification of new active
principles, and the development of extraction and purification systems.4 Indena
coordinates with universities and research institutions around the world to
assess the safety and effectiveness of its extracts up to clinical phase I. The
company has accomplished over 150 patents, 700 published scientific studies, and
has more than 700 employees. Indena has distribution operations in more than 40
countries, operates 5 production sites, and has 5 international branches.
One of Indena’s most recent successes is with its product Mirtoselect®
Bilberry. Mirtoselect® has the advertising slogan “No more half truths,”
referring to how there has been varying bilberry quality in the market and
Indena’s development of a bilberry standardization widely accepted by many
responsible members of the botanical industry. This involves a newly developed
High Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) analytical method that allows the
identification and the direct quantification of the key bilberry anthocyanins
(natural pigments mainly responsible for the beneficial properties of bilberry)
both in plant material and in extracts.
“First of all, speaking for everyone at Indena, it is a tremendous honor to
receive this award,” said Greg Ris, Indena’s vice president of sales. “There was
always a deep mutual respect between Indena and Dr. Tyler. “Tip” (Prof. Tyler’s
nickname) was a true gentleman who happened to be a leading authority in
botanical medicine as a researcher and educator. Knowing that Indena produces
high quality extracts that meet the most stringent levels of analytical rigor,
he was kind enough to be Indena USA’s consultant and spokesperson in the late
1990s. I would like to thank the American Botanical Council for this prestigious
award.”
References
1 Mabberley D. Mabberley's Plant-Book: A Portable Dictionary of Plants,
their Classifications, and Uses, 3rd edition. New York, NY: Cambridge
University Press; 2008.
2 Duke J. Mabberley's Plant-Book: A Portable
Dictionary of Plants, their Classifications, and Uses, 3rd edition.
HerbalGram. 2009;82 [in press].
3 Indena Company Profile. Indena
Web site. Available at: http://www.indena.com/pages/profile.php.
Accessed February 18, 2009.
4 Our research page. Indena Web site. Available
at: http://www.indena.com/pages/research.php.
Accessed February 18, 2009.
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