Lowe's anti-cancer product launched - A boy's fascination turns into a man's dream

Henry Lowe's boyhood fascination with ball moss, a weed commonly seen in Jamaican gardens and on electric power lines, matured into a man's dream with the unveiling last week of the neutraceutical product, Alpha Prostate Formula. The product, expected to promote men's prostate health, will be on the market in the next three months.

"The nutraceutical is basically a semi-crude product with bioactivity which will be put in a capsule along with other ingredients in the formula. In other words, it will be like a multi-vitamin in a capsule or one of those herbal products in a capsule except that it is partially purified," Lowe explained in an interview outside the launch.

Lowe also explained that the formula in this nutraceutical product "will provide prostate health as well as slow down the growth of the cancer and/or destroy the cancer". However, he pointed out that it must be noted that this is a formula with ingredients which are proprietary and cannot be disclosed.

The tramcar days

The launch last Thursday was the culmination of a boy's curiosity turned fascination turned into research and development. "When I was a child, from tramcar days, my father used to take us for rides from downtown to Constant Spring when we were well-behaved. I was just fascinated to know how they (ball moss) survived but couldn't get closer to them," Lowe had said in a Gleaner interview a few years ago as he outlined his boyhood curiosity, which soon turned into a lifelong obsession.

Many years ago, after completing his master's degree in Australia, he extracted a compound from some ball moss. He found that it was bioactive. Not having the resources then to continue the research, he stored the material in a flask and carried it around to his various jobs for 12 years. He even kept some of the material in his refrigerator until the opportunity for further research of this prolific weed presented itself.

Research Institute

The product's unveiling coincided with the launch at the Terra Nova All Suite Hotel, New Kingston, of the Bio-Tech R&D Institute, a new research institute with principal shareholders being founder Lowe, Environmental Health Foundation, Dr Joseph Bryant and Federated Pharmaceutical/Lascelles Limited.

The institute will collaborate with other research agencies, major universities and Federated Pharmaceutical and will focus on the production of pharmaceuticals, food and fragrances from indigenous biological material.

Lowe, a leading Jamaican scientist, has been working for nearly 10 years with University of Maryland's scientist, Bryant, to extract and test ball moss' (Tillandsia recurvata's) bioactive ingredients. The original goal was to produce a pharmaceutical product but Lowe explained that extended legal wranglings over intellectual property and lack of funding forced him to go the neutraceutical route for the time being.

Multibillion dollar industry

It is expected, Lowe said, that Jamaica can earn between two and five per cent of the multibillion-dollar neutraceutical market in the next five years if concerted efforts are channelled into the development of indigenous plants with medicinal potential. He said that 84 of the 160 established plants in the world are found in Jamaica.

Compounds isolated in ball moss had been showing strong action against HIV in the laboratory. However, the focus of Lowe's and his associate's work had always been on the anti-cancer effects of the plant. Lowe said a few years ago that the laboratory studies were indicating that the plant compounds were effective in all the cancer-cell lines. In fact, he reported that ball moss compounds have a broad-base effect against cancer. The research has been focusing on cancers of the breast and prostate; B16 melanoma and two cancers caused by HIV/AIDS B-cell lymphoma or non-Hodgskin's lymphoma and Kaposi's sarcoma.

Eulalee Thompson is health editor and a professional counsellor; email: eulalee.thompson@gleanerjm.com.