Focusing on plant-based drug development, this Southern Californian pharmaceutical company has formed a network with ethnobotanists, botanical gardens, and local tribes in Central and South America, South and Southeast Asia and Africa to identify plants, and parts of plants, used in traditional medicines. By combining ethnobotanical knowledge with modern, sophisticated screening and medical research, Shaman believes this is a less risky, time and cost saving method for the discovery of novel drugs. It has an agreement, for example, with the Pan Amazonian Indigenous Peoples Federation (COICA), which represents 70,000 indigenous peoples, to provide long-term direct and staged compensations to local communities in return for the collection and supply of local materials. By building on its long history of medical use, Shaman expects the discoveries to be both effective and safe. Since beginning operations in 1990, Shaman has translated this concept into two clinical products, PROVIR/tm, an oral anti-viral product for respiratory infections, and VIREND/tm a topical anti-viral drug for herpes infections. Shaman's latest activity is to study the therapeutic management of diabetes in native cultures.

Although reimbursement for the knowledge and effort of the local communities is treated as part of the technological costs of the program, Shaman has not revealed how the benefits are to be shared with local communities if the products are successful on the market.

Shaman seeks to provide contributions to its partners through a non-profit foundation known as The Healing Forest Conservancy. This Conservancy is endowed by Shaman to conduct training programs and to help the Government of Belize establish TERRA NOVA, a haven for plants that have so far escaped human destruction.

Sources:

Information and Company Report supplied by Shaman Pharmaceuticals Inc. and various chapters from Reid et al. (eds.), l993.