Ep. 115: Antibiotic Resistant Diseases and Nature's Next Medicines with Cassandra Quave

Talking Beats with Daniel Lelchuk

"No matter where you go in the world, there has been a system of medicine that has been primarily based on plants. Billions rely on such a system still today."

Ethnobotanist (we discover what that is!) Dr. Cassandra Quave joins the podcast. She is out with a book called The Plant Hunter: A Scientist's Quest for Nature's Next Medicines. The book explores many issues people often think about-- what is happening in the vast, dizzying world of plants, and can plants help us more-- maybe a lot more-- than they already are?
Plants are the basis for an array of lifesaving and health-improving medicines we all now take for granted. Ever taken an aspirin? Thank a willow tree for that. What about life-saving medicines for malaria? Some of those are derived from cinchona and wormwood.
In today's world of synthetic pharmaceuticals, scientists and laypeople alike have lost this connection to the natural world. But by ignoring the potential of medicinal plants, we are losing out on the opportunity to discover new life-saving medicines needed in the fight against the greatest medical challenge of this century: the rise of the post-antibiotic era. Antibiotic-resistant microbes plague us all. Each year, 700,000 people die due to these untreatable infections; by 2050, 10 million annual deaths are expected unless we act now.

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Dr. Cassandra L. Quave is a medical ethnobotanist whose work is focused on the documentation and analysis of botanical remedies used in the treatment of infectious disease. Her expertise and interests include the traditional medical practices of the Mediterranean, and the botanical sources of anti-infectives and natural products for skin care.

Dr. Quave holds a joint appointment as Associate Professor of Dermatology in the Emory University School of Medicine and Emory Center for the Study of Human Health, where she leads drug discovery research initiatives and teaches courses on medicinal plants, food and health. Dr. Quave also serves as Director/Curator of the Emory University Herbarium, and is associated faculty with the Departments of Biology, Environmental Sciences and Anthropology at Emory. She is a member of the Emory University Antibiotic Resistance Center and the Winship Cancer Center Discovery and Development Therapeutics Program. She also serves on the training faculty for the Antibiotic Resistance and Therapeutic Discovery Training Program, the Molecular and Systems Pharmacology Graduate Program and Microbiology and Molecular Genetics Graduate Program at Emory. Her work has been featured in a number of international outlets including the New York Times Magazine.