 As researchers work to discover new drugs to defeat cancer, they're looking in some unexpected places. Here in Mexico, native healers have been using medicinal plants for thousands of years. Today, some of those plants are providing important clues for scientists trying to develop new medicines. After all, many medicines are based on herbal principles. Many herbs have given us the active principles and the synthetic medicines. Most of our anti-cancer drugs, or at least many of them, are derived from natural sources, plants and microorganisms. The possibilities of native plants have captured the imagination of Dr. Mary O'Connell and her students at New Mexico State University. In a special program funded by the National Institutes of Health, these young scientists are helping identify and begin the analysis of medicinal plants of the desert southwest. Some day, this work may lead to new cures and people everywhere will benefit from the extraordinary convergence of ancient roots, modern medicine. In Oaxaco, this region of the southern coast of Mexico is one of the world's great centers for crafts and folk art, with a history reaching back more than 2,000 years. The tradition is very much alive today. Many villages here specialize in a single craft, pottery from local clays, weaving from sheep's wool, basketry made of palm fronds, or the fanciful wooden carvings known as alebriges. In this village of Arasola, many families have home studios where they carve copal wood from nearby forests. Other family members do the intricate painting that brings these imaginative carvings to life. These wooden creatures, monsters, animals, and everything in between are popular with tourists for their beauty and authenticity. With few modern conveniences and an agrarian economy, the local people have a close relationship with nature. They use native plants for food, for their livelihood, and for healing. My mother showed me because her children would get sick and she would look for herbs. She would bathe us or give us something to drink. I remember the herbs she used, so I could use them too. Amada Aguilaras Martinez is a curandero, a healer. She collects dozens of different herbs from the land near her village and still others from a distant canyon during the rainy season. I do work with herbs, but I also work with God because God gave us these plants on the land to cure his children. Here in this one is called Cepito, what is Cepito good for? It is good to use against colds. And this one is called Yerba Moradita. It is good for when you eat something spicy and if you have heartburn, you can take some of this and it will go away. The people who come to her pay amada whatever they think it's worth, although she says another curandero nearby does have set rates for his cures. Since modern doctors are far away and more expensive, herbal healers are the primary source of medical care for many oaxacños who are mostly subsistence farmers. Amada is sad that none of her children wanted to learn from her. They've all moved away from the village. She worries her knowledge of desert plants will die with her. What I tell people is that they need to learn because I will not live forever. But today worries are set aside. This is the Feast of Saint Andrew the Apostle, patron saint of this village. These boys and girls receive their first communion and share a special blessing from the Virgin Mary by passing out colorful paper flowers. Among those returning to celebrate with the village is one of Amada's former patients, Rosalina Sanchez-Mendosa. She and her husband, Prisciliano Cortes-Cous, have brought their youngest daughter, Heral, to see her grandparents for the first time. Rosalina's mother has been busy preparing food for the festival. Today, she and Rosalina get some dried native corn, a major local crop ready to be soaked, ground and made into tortillas. The visit goes quickly and soon it's time for the couple to leave the old life and return to what they hope will be a much better future. Like so many other Mexicans eager to work, that means that they head north, a three-day journey by bus on rough roads to La Frontera, the border. Their new home, Ciudad Juarez, is separated from El Paso, Texas by the Rio Grande. Buses come here to bring workers to the Maquiladores factories run just across the Mexican border by American companies. There they can earn in one hour what is a full day's wage for a man elsewhere in Mexico, about $2. Most live in outlying districts called colonias. In one room buildings made of cement if they're lucky, but often in tin or even cardboard shacks. There's no indoor plumbing, running water and electricity are only recently available. Streets are unpaved, dust and wild dogs everywhere. Crime is rampant. Still, there is the hope of a better life. If not for Rosalina and Prisciliano, then at least for their four children. Here in Anatra, on the outskirts of Juarez, the older children can go to school. Prisciliano's family, unlike most of their neighbors, has running water. Prisciliano's 70-year-old mother would rather be back in her old village, but lives with them to help out with the children and the chores. Rosalina goes door to door in the better, older neighborhoods of Juarez to sell the baskets, purses and animal figures that Prisciliano weaves at home. For us, weaving is like an inheritance that our grandparents left us. And we go out in the city and find ways to earn money with our work. Because we know there are others that when they get to the city, they don't know where to go or what to do. They don't have money and they don't know where to work to earn some money. But at least we can trust that we know what to work on. Even though we know we will struggle, but we can weave this little animal and go to a house and sell it and we can earn five or ten pesos and then share it with the family. Prisciliano says he loves weaving. He learned from his father and is teaching his children. There have been some modern enhancements. This needle is made out of a car antenna and here we just took it to be cut and this helps us a lot. So far, between the weaving and playing in a band, Prisciliano earns just barely enough to buy groceries for the family. Most meals are tortillas, beans and rice. It's a lean existence. There's no extra money for medicine. When one of the children is sick, Rosalina and Prisciliano come to Cristo Rey. A missionary clinic started four years ago by Dr. San Juana Mendoza. I come from a mining family. My father, my grandfather, my uncles, they were miners. They work in the Sierra Madres of Chihuahua and I was aware somehow about the hardness of living in isolated places and living with no medical sources available and was for me a very deep memory, very sad memory, seeing my mom not sleeping in the whole night because she had a baby sick and she didn't have sources sometimes to go to a doctor and for me that was a very painful, a very pitiful memory to see a mother suffering because the child is sick. We have population that comes from the country areas of the south of Mexico like Oaxaca and they come to the north migrating looking for job opportunities. These people are very, very low education and low income. Their average income is about $35 to $45 per week. Their main resource of work is the factories, the maquiles. They are very hard for them to keep at steady employment and they have a steady income. Unfortunately, their lifestyle changed for bad. They tend to buy fritos, they tend to buy junk food and they tend to get very addicted to sodas, to sugar. So they start developing diseases that were not common in their villages like hypertension, diabetes, arthritis, even depression. That's very sad. This young woman suffers from diabetes and high blood pressure. A prescription drug can help control it but it is very expensive so Dr. Mendoza teaches her about some herbal remedies that can help her reduce the dose she needs. I recommend them to use, you know, natural things that are available like a healthy diet, a healthy plan of exercising and also to use wild herbs that are available in our community. One of those herbal remedies is a name, Prodigilso. Also we call it Hamula and the scientific name is Brucchelia Grandiflora and it grows wild here. It's about one meter or two meters high and this herbal is very efficient to lower the blood sugar levels and the people can grow them themselves, you know, in pots, they can grow them in their homes and have it fresh and the only thing they take is just to make an infusion, a little tea and drink it two or three times a day. Sometimes my patients come here, you know, with four hundredths, with five hundredths of blood sugar and they, with medication, diet and exercise again, combined with this herbal medicine, they can go in normal limits. So I encourage them, not only to look for the herb but to plant it in their own homes. After all, many medicines are based on herbal principles, you know. Many herbs have given us the active principle and the synthetic medicines. I see bunches of patients. Lots of families, they come, they migrate from the countryside and they tend to disconnect themselves with the roots, with the cultural roots and they tend to forget the ancestors' knowledge. Every tribe used to have their own medicines and their own spices and their own food. One of my duties is to remind them about this link between them and their environment, to help them to recognize all these sources that we have, to recognize the plants and to accept and to come back to the practical herbs that can save them money, can help them to stay healthy and make them more independent. This desert is alive, it's full of life. It's full of plants, it's full of richness, it's full of sources for people to have a better life and even to fight some diseases. Today, Rosalina and Prisciliano have brought in five-year-old Iran who has been complaining about a blister in his mouth. They pay a very modest fee and bring the doctor one of the animals Prisciliano has woven. After an exam, she prescribes a rinse made from aloe vera and an herb called malva, which is inexpensive and available at the local market. If that doesn't clear up the infection, only then will she prescribe a modern medicine. Medicine is very expensive, especially that they don't have insurance on medical benefits. I regard myself like a healer. Still, my main concern is how to teach the people to stay healthy, to stay in the right path and to prevent complications that will take them to hospitals or traumatic treatments. This is one of my goals and this is my reward. If eventually a woman comes to me and she said, you know, I know how to take care of certain illnesses. I don't have to come to you. I feel like laughing. I feel like laughing and praising God. That passion for educating others about the value of native herbal remedies has brought Dr. Mendoza to New Mexico State University in Las Cruces. She comes to this summer workshop run by Dr. Mario Kamel. For six weeks, students study medicinal plants of the Southwest. Muchísimas gracias por haberme invitado. Thank you very much for having invited me. Dr. Mendoza has been invited to share her experiences treating patients with medicinal herbs, many of which are found on both sides of the border. It's kind of an itchy green color. It has a very delicate and very remarkable aroma and the leaves are very distinguished, like a little soul. Once you see it, you smell it. You have it in your hands. You will not forget it. The workshop, now in its fourth year, is funded by the National Institutes of Health. The goal of the NIH-funded project is that these students would be attracted, trained and ultimately pursue PhD degrees in any number of disciplines that constitute biomedical research. Chemistry, biology, physiology, medicinal plants, natural products, chemistry, microbiology, bioengineering, all kinds of specific topic areas. The program has special appeal for students from minority cultures. Many students in the Southwest come from cultures that use plants as medicines for improving quality of life issues, for relieving minor aches and pains, for colds, for treatments of modest infections. And so itís very, very reasonable to excite these students about how the chemistries in those plants could be studied to have an efficacy in a biomedical context. Once I got really sunburnt, really bad, and my grandpa, heís not a medicine man, but he knew basic things, how to use certain plants and he made this sort of like pasty stuff and he put it on my skin and it soothed it. In the old days, they used to do that. My grandmother did. She used a lot of plant materials, whether they be boiled or actually eaten directly, for anything from cuts to wounds to intestinal problems to pink eye. Today, the class is on an herb walk in the nearby Oregon mountains. Dr. O'Connell has invited nurse and herbalist Deborah Brent to lead the class. Iím on the state board of nursing of the Integrative Medicine Committee, where weíre trying to integrate different traditions and different aspects of medicine. This is a good area for medicinal plants because itís in a transitional zone between the lower desert and the higher desert and so thereís a lot of overlap. Thatís why I like this trail for medicinal plants. Weíve seen probably 15 or 20 plants, Brickelia, Garia, Silt Tassel, weíve seen Mesquite, Acacia, Prickly Pear, Vitioia, Desert Willow. Theyíre learning the basics with botany of these plants, why local people use them and how they use them. Theyíre also appreciating how the environment will influence the growth of these plants, how not anyone plant is the same as any other plant, what the effects of those then might be on considerations of how these compounds accumulate in the plant. Itís called Mariola. If you smell it, itís better. Everyone is a scientist, humans are scientists. Thatís what brings me to work every day, is how does this work, how does this organism behave, why does this plant make this chemical? Thatís a whole other side to the project we really havenít described yet. We as humans think the plants make drugs. The plants make chemicals for their own uses and weíve learned how to exploit them. And so these same chemicals that plants make to attract animals as pollinators or repel animals because they chew them up are then the same chemicals that then become useful to us in a drug setting. Weíve generated a list of plants to study based on probably a hundred years of whatís called ethnobotanical literature. The basis of the hypothesis is that if you use plants as a source of drugs that have been identified by cultures as being important medical agents, you increase the odds of finding efficacious chemistries two to three-fold. So the drug companies know this factor. Medical communities understand this. So what weíre hoping to show is that students will learn how drugs are developed by studying the whole process of chemical synthesis, chemical extractions and analytical tools and then testing those chemistries for their efficacy. The students spend hours learning precise lab procedures to be used on the plants. How to extract and purify the compounds, how to identify them structurally, what kinds of solvents to use, how to design biological experiments to test for the ability of some of these extracts in controlled settings to inhibit the growth of different microorganisms. But they also discuss the ethics involved in collecting native plants from the wild. You could say plagiarizing, but the word biopiracy is being used now to describe the collecting of plant material, information about biological materials from all around the world. And this is the idea that developed nations go to regions of high genetic or biological diversity and collect from there valuable plants or animal materials, living materials and use those in another context and then often sell them back to the country from which this material originated. Not only are students exposed to the ethics of biopiracy in developing countries, but Dr. O'Connell has arranged an exciting collaboration with a cutting-edge research center. A small group of young scientists will be taking their desert plants to Seattle for testing. I want to welcome you to the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center and hope you have a productive and constructive couple of days with us. My lab at the Hutchinson Center specializes in drug discovery and the group at New Mexico State studies native plants of the Southwest. Plants have always been a rich source of biologically active compounds, medicinal compounds, and so we saw an opportunity to put together a program where we would screen compounds extracted from Southwestern plants in our anti-cancer assays. The students brought not only their compounds, but their enthusiasm and their own reasons for pursuing this kind of research. This is kind of a personal issue, and this actually started back in 1993 when my mother was actually diagnosed with breast cancer. She had a mastectomy, which, as you all know, is a removal of the breast, and that to me just was kind of like an awakening. It's what I wanted to do. I was a realist. I knew that I wasn't going to be able to play sports all my life. I've always been a fan of science. It's a totally different world. Other natives in New Mexico, indigenous people, I'm speaking about, have used this plant for illnesses in the stomach, so all the gastrointestinal problems, and so hopefully I can find some activity from this plant for something of that nature. And then I broke down the plant into separate organs, leave roots and stems. The great data drive ends up with lots of information, but one of the key points is to keep track of what everybody did. And so if a mistake is made and which well sample goes into, or a code isn't correctly entered, we can spend a lot of time retracing errors and waste time and money. So what I'm doing is making sure that we know exactly what went into those wells and so we can go back and find those plants, find the extracts, work them up, purify compounds from them should any of these crude preparations have an interesting activity. Most of our anti-cancer drugs, or at least many of them, are derived from natural sources, plants and microorganisms. So over the millennia that evolution has worked on these sources, they have developed very sophisticated pathways to produce small molecules, what we know as drugs. And that evolutionary process has yielded things that are very specific in their action. What we're trying to do is to discover whether that specificity is useful in the treatment of cancer. There are over a hundred specific diseases, specific indications that we collectively call cancer. And those all have unique genetic fingerprints. So the likelihood that any single drug will be active against the whole spectrum of tumors is small. What we're trying to do is now match specific medicine, specific genetic fingerprints to treat cancers. Today, the students are testing their plant extracts in baker's yeast. We've genetically modified these yeast to model some of the genetic alterations that occur in human cancers. In the development process, should we see promising activity as long and complicated but fairly predictable? So first, we would fractionate the crude extracts into individual compounds and isolate the individual chemical that's responsible for the activity. It would then go through a process of preclinical testing where we would test it using human cancer cell lines, as well as cancer models and animals. It would go through toxicology testing to make sure that it's a safe compound. And ultimately, if all those are positive, into human clinical trials. Simon says developing a new drug can take anywhere from 5 to 10 years and cost hundreds of millions of dollars. Still, he sees reason for optimism. There's always a chance that medicinal compounds will be found in the most unlikely places. The Pacific U-Tree is something that we see here in Seattle almost every day. And it looks not terribly promising, but it's a source of taxal, which is one of the most effective anticancer agents known. So yes, I'm very optimistic that we will find something. In fact, these three plants, Berberi, Datura, and Wild Mustard, brought by New Mexico State students, showed promising results in the first round of tests. Or perhaps the next breakthrough may come from the medicinal plants that Rosalina and Prisciliano buy at their local herb market. These botanical wonders, like the ones from New Mexico State, could hold valuable clues for medical researchers. And one day, people everywhere will benefit from the coming together of Ancient Roots Modern Medicine. Next time on Ancient Roots Modern Medicine. Journey to the exotic Caribbean island of Curacao, where Dina Fieris is on a crusade to preserve her homeland's diminishing medicinal plants. And see how scientists are unlocking the power of the island's botanical wealth. From the divi-divi-tree's ability to fight staph infections, to mermaids' hair, a coastal algae with a promise of cancer cures. For information on Ancient Roots Modern Medicine, log on to www.rootsandmedicine.com. I'm Jeannie Gleason. Welcome to the director's interview here for Ancient Roots Modern Medicine. This is Patrick Coley and my co-director, co-producer and crime for the last 18 years. And the piece we're going to be talking about today is a three-part series, Ancient Roots Modern Medicine, funded by the International Air Land Consortium that takes you to Jordan, the borderlands of U.S. and Mexico, and Curacao. I think what's really interesting about this series that makes it unique from other documentaries on this topic is the locale of where we filmed it. We had very strict criteria in meeting the documentary framework. Number one, we chose to do this in arid lands, those lands of the planet that aren't as exposed as much as those of, like, the rainforest. And look at those areas where a lot of filmmakers haven't been. But it was more than just geography. We needed to framework within that traditional culture. That's the Ancient Roots part of the film. And then there also had to be the modern science aspect of it, ongoing researchers in these regions, and the connection between the modern scientists and the traditional groups. What we ended up finding after looking at all those criteria for all the subject matters was only a handful of places in the entire globe that had this. As Jeannie mentioned, we ended up going to the Middle East, Jordan, and following Bedouin Tent family and working with Dr. Sal Sanoran from the University of Jordan in her scientific research. We followed up the same thing in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands with Dr. Mario O'Connell from New Mexico State University. And we looked at the rich curandera culture of the American Southwest and Mexico. And the story obviously ended up at the Cancer Research Institute up in Seattle. And then in Curacao, we had the wonderful island culture. But it's a dry island, not your typical palm tree-studded Caribbean island. That of Curacao with cactus and rough landscape where we met Dina Fierce, the healer. And then we followed the science of John de Freitas who works and lives on the island. And then also that of Bill Gerwig, who's done some extraordinary work with Mermaid's hair as an anti-cancer fighting agent. So it was very difficult to find those, but when we did, the stories unfolded splendidly. You know, it might be interesting to you to note that while we've got a very supportive crew back here at home, this was not a major funded documentary with lots of people in the field. It was basically Patrick and I. Patrick did all the initial research, wrote one of the scripts, did all of the initial contacts, and we would go into the field and it's always kind of fun. We go in and I'm sort of like the director and shake hands with everybody and I say, we need about half an hour to set up and then take off my coat and get down on my hands and take cables down and run audio and Patrick's doing the camera work. So it's been a very fun adventure doing this piece and I hope you enjoy looking at it as much as we have enjoyed taping it and all the adventures. I want to invite you to after you've watched the whole piece to go back again and listen to the director's commentary who will be telling some of the fun stories and answering some of the questions that people ask as we have shown it around the country and people look at it and they say, what about this, what about this? We'll try to answer some of those questions. So there is another track of the director's commentary and we'll just be chatting with you on that. So, see you there.