American Botanical Council Welcomes 15 New Advisory Board Members

Source: American Botanical Council

(Austin, TX. February 10, 2012) The American Botanical Council (ABC) announced in early February the addition of 15 new members to its Advisory Board. These esteemed individuals-with academic backgrounds ranging from nutrition, neurology, and naturopathy to anthropology, botany, ethnobotany, and biochemistry-are committed to promoting healthier living through herbal and plant-based medicine. Advisory Board members volunteer their time to peer review articles, papers, and other documents that appear in HerbalGram,HerbalEGram, HerbClips, and various ABC publications. Additionally, HerbalGram editors seek feedback and advice from Advisory Board members on issues such as research questions, article ideas, ABC policies, book reviews, and much more.

The new Advisory Board members include a botanist, an ethnobotanist, 4 pharmacognosists and medicinal plant researchers, 2 natural product chemists, a neurologist, 2 naturopathic physicians, 2 herbalists, a nutritional biochemist, and an oncology researcher.  

“We are deeply grateful to include these experts on the ABC Advisory Board,” said ABC Founder and Executive Director Mark Blumenthal. “In many cases, adding these people to our Advisory Board simply formalizes an already established, long-term relationship in which many of these friends and colleagues have been contributing their time and expertise to ABC and many of its publications as expert peer reviewers.”

Following are the names and brief biosketches of the new members of the ABC Advisory Board:

• Wendy Applequist, PhD, is a botanist and an associate curator at the Missouri Botanical Garden’s William L. Brown Center, which is dedicated to preserving traditional knowledge of useful plants. At the Center, Applequist manages natural products discovery programs and research efforts involving medicinal plants. She currently serves as an associate editor of Economic Botany and the secretary of the international Nomenclature Committee for Vascular Plants. Her first book, The Identification of Medicinal Plants: A Handbook of the Morphology of Botanicals in Commerce, was published in 2006 by the Missouri Botanical Garden and ABC.
• K. Hüsnü Can Başer, PhD, served as the dean of the Faculty of Pharmacy and the director of the Medicinal and Aromatic Plant and Drug Research Centre (TBAM) at Anadolu University in Turkey. He is currently a member of the World Health Organization’s Expert Advisory Panel on Traditional Medicine and the Turkish Pharmacopoeia Commission. His research interests include essential oils, alkaloids, and natural products research. In recent years, 2 plant species have been named in his honor: Origanum husnucan-basari and Aristolochia baseri. He is the co-editor of the Handbook of Essential Oils: Science, Technology, and Applications, published by CRC Press in 2009.
• Rudolf Bauer, PhD, is considered to be one of the world’s foremost experts on Echinacea. Currently, he is a professor in the Department of Pharmacognosy and head of the Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of Graz in Austria. Bauer received his PhD under the supervision of Prof. Hildebert Wagner-one of the leading experts on adaptogenic medicinal plants-at the University of Munich. From 2002 to 2007 he served as the president of the International Society for Medicinal Plant Research. He is also the co-editor of Planta Medica and leads the Traditional Chinese Medicine Research Center at Graz. His research interests include quality control and standardization of herbal medicine and structural research of biologically active plant constituents. Bauer was awarded ABC’s Norman R. Farnsworth Excellence in Botanical Research Award in 2010.  
• Chun-Tao Che, PhD, is the recently-appointed Norman R. Farnsworth Professor of Pharmacognosy in the College of Pharmacy at the University of Illinois at Chicago, where he received his PhD in 1982. Prof. Che is the associate editor of Pharmaceutical Biology and an editorial board member of the Journal of Ethnopharmacology. His research interests include pharmaceutical applications of herbal preparations, quality control standardization, and the development of evidence-based herbal medicine to support traditional medicine use in modern society. He has been cited in more than 240 scientific papers.
• Bevin Clare, RH, CNS, is a licensed nutritionist and clinical herbalist based in Laurel, Maryland. She is the chair of the Masters of Science Herbal Medicine Program at the Tai Sophia Institute, an adjunct assistant professor at the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy, and an associate professor at the New York Chiropractic College. Clare is the current vice-president of the American Herbalists Guild, a member of the board of directors for United Plant Savers, and an advisory board member of the International Research Group for the Conservation of Medicinal Plants.
• Tori Hudson, ND, has been in practice as a naturopathic physician for 28 years, and is a clinical professor at 3 institutions-the National College of Natural Medicine (NCNM), the Southwest College of Naturopathic Medicine, and Bastyr University. Specializing in natural therapies for women’s health, she serves as the program director of the Institute of Women’s Health and Integrative Medicine and as the medical director and co-founder of “A Woman’s Time” clinic, both in Portland, Oregon. Dr. Hudson is the author of the Women’s Encyclopedia of Natural Medicine, the 1999 Naturopathic Physician of the Year, and the 2009 recipient of the Natural Products Association’s Pioneer Award. She is also the director of research, development, and education for Vitanica, a dietary supplement company for women’s health.
• David Kroll, PhD, is director of Science Communications and investigator in the Laboratory of Microbiology and Genomics at the new Nature Research Center of the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences in Raleigh. Dr. Kroll is also Professor of Science Communications in the MS program in technical communications at North Carolina State University. Previously, he worked as a senior research pharmacologist at the Research Triangle Institute and was assistant and associate professor of Pharmacology and Toxicology at the University of Colorado School of Pharmacy. Dr. Kroll’s current research involves finding anti-cancer and chemoprotective compounds from milk thistle (Silybum marianum). He recently completed a term on the editorial board of the Physician’s Data Query at the National Cancer Institute’s Office of Cancer Complementary and Alternative Medicine and serves routinely as a reviewer for NCI and the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine.
• Douglas “Duffy” MacKay, ND, is the vice-president of Science and Regulatory Affairs at the Council for Responsible Nutrition, a trade association representing dietary supplement manufacturers and ingredient suppliers. MacKay is a licensed naturopathic doctor and works part time at the Integrative Medical Center in Kensington, Maryland. Duffy is a delegate for the United States Pharmacopeial Convention and currently serves on editorial boards of the Alternative Medicine Review and the Natural Medicine Journal. He previously worked in the natural products industry at Nordic Naturals and Thorne Research.  
• Mark Messina, PhD, is the president of Nutrition Matters, Inc., a nutrition consulting firm, and the executive director of the Soy Nutrition Institute. He also works as an adjunct associate professor in the Department of Nutrition at Loma Linda University. His research interests include the health effects of soyfoods and soybean isoflavones. On these topics, he has given more than 500 presentations and published more than 60 articles. He was the 2011 recipient of the United Soybean Board’s Outstanding Achievement Award.
• Susan Murch, PhD, a natural products chemist, is an associate professor and Canada Research Chair in Natural Products Chemistry at the University of British Columbia. She also serves as a research associate for the National Tropical Botanical Garden in Hawaii where she conducts research on tropical plant conservation and development. Dr. Murch served as the president of the Natural Health Products Research Society of Canada from 2010-2011 and is a member or fellow of more than 10 scientific societies. Her research interests include plant metabolomics, plant neurochemicals, and the conservation of breadfruit (Artocarpus altilis). She is the co-author of a recent feature article on osha root (Ligusticum porteri) in a 2011 issue of ABC's peer-reviewed journal HerbalGram.
• Nicholas Oberlies, PhD, a pharmacognosist and natural products chemist, is an associate professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Previously, he worked in the Natural Products Laboratory at the Research Triangle Institute in North Carolina. Dr. Oberlies is on the editorial board of Progress in the Chemistry of Organic Natural Compounds. He serves the natural products community as an engaged scientist and regular contributor and reviewer of the literature.
• John Rashford, PhD, is a professor of anthropology at the College of Charleston, where he teaches courses such as “Ethnoscience and Ethnobiological Classification,” “Ecological Anthropology,” and “Gardens in Charleston: An Ethnobotanical View.” His research interests include baobab trees (Adansonia gregorii), ethnobotany, economic anthropology, and ecology. He is currently president of the Board of the Charleston Museum as well as a board member of the National Tropical Gardens and the Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Foundation.
• Ethan Russo, MD, is a board-certified neurologist, a psychopharmacology researcher, and the senior medical advisor to GW Pharmaceuticals in the United Kingdom, manufacturer of a patented, multi-standardized, clinically-tested extract of Cannabis sativa. Dr. Russo previously served as an affiliate associate professor in the Department of Pharmacology at the University of Washington School of Medicine and a visiting professor at the Institute of Botany for the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He is the author of the Handbook of Psychotropic Herbs (Haworth Press, 2001) and was previously the secretary of the International Cannabinoid Research Society and the chairman for the International Association for Cannabinoid Medicines.
• Richard “Ric” Scalzo is the president, CEO, and founder of Gaia Herbs, Inc, a grower and manufacturer of herbal wellness solutions. His interests include herbal medicine research, herbal formulation processes, and ecological sustainability. Scalzo serves on the board of the Research Center for Natural and Social Resources (CIRENAS) and is the author of Herbal Solutions for Healthy Living (Herbal Research Publications, 2001). He was awarded an honorary Doctorate in Naturopathic Sciences from the Southwest College of Naturopathic Medicine.
• Peiying Yang, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of General Oncology in the Section of Integrative Medicine at the University of Texas, M.D. Anderson Cancer Center (MDACC). She received her BS and MS from the Beijing University of Traditional Chinese Medicine and her PhD in Nutritional Science from the University of Maine, Orono, in 1997. Yang has been actively involved in the International Oncology Center-a collaboration between MDACC and Fudan University Cancer Hospital in Shanghai, China-where she examines the role of Chinese Medicine in cancer treatment and prevention. Dr. Yang is a member of the Society for Integrative Oncology, the American Association for Cancer Research, and the American Society of Mass Spectrometry.