Students take top honours at natural health products conference

The son of parents from Vietnam and grandparents from China, Dennis Ma grew up in house where traditional remedies and natural herbal products were commonplace. So using a derivative from a rare plant to try to find a cure for cancer doesn’t really surprise him all that much.~

“A lot of these natural products have been used as traditional medicines for a long time, but we’re starting to see a lot more of them being used in a scientific setting,” said Ma, a second year master’s student in biochemistry who tests the effectiveness of pancratistatin, a derivative of a Hawaiian spider lily which has proven to kill certain cancer cells without harming healthy ones.

Ma and lab partner Katie Facecchia, both students in the lab of professor Siyaram Pandey, recently returned from Montreal where they attended the Natural Health Products Research Society of Canada’s annual conference. Ma took first place in the student oral presentation category while Facecchia, who studies the effectiveness of a water soluble formula of the naturally occurring Coenzyme Q10 at halting the progression of Parkinson’s disease, placed second.

Another group of Dr. Pandey’s students recently garnered a considerable amount of attention for their work on a formula they developed from dandelion root extract, which also halted the spread of certain types of cancer cells.

Facecchia said attending the conference gave her a renewed sense of optimism that the scientific community is embracing the notion of looking to nature to test solutions for current medical challenges.

“People used these products back in the day for a reason and now we’re rediscovering them with modern science,” she said.

There were five presentations from Pandey’s lab made at the conference and three of them were dedicated to the memory of Kevin Couvillon, who died in 2010 at the age of 26 after a lengthy battle with cancer. His parents donated $20,000 to Pandey’s lab earlier this year. Pandey said Ma, Facecchia and fellow students Pamela Ovadje and Madona Chochkeh made high-impact presentations, which he believes contributed to the society’s decision to hold its 2013 here in Windsor.

“They responded to the panel’s questions very lucidly and defended the work very well,” he said. “We’re very grateful to Seeds 4 Hope, Joseph Sczesei and the Couvillons for generously supporting their research.”