KOTA KINABALU: Malaysia and Indonesia are currently working to develop a form of treatment against Tuberculosis (TB) using an extract from certain mangrove tree species.
This is being done under a two-year research collaboration between Universiti Malaysia Sabah (UMS) and Swiss German University (SGU) Indonesia, which started six months ago.
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UMS Biotechnology Research Institute Director, Professor Dr Zarina Amin, who disclosed this, said they are currently at the stage of extracting substance from mangrove before putting it on test against the TB bacteria.
“Next week I expect to continue the culture process (to grow the TB bacteria and then screen it with the extracts from mangrove tree),” she said when met at the 6th International Biotechnology Symposium at the Pacific Sutera here Wednesday.
When asked why TB, Dr Zarina said because in Malaysia, Sabah TB had the highest rate of infection at 20 per cent, so they want to find as many medicinal plants in Indonesia and also in Sabah which have potential to be developed as cure for TB.
“The research project at the moment is to try ensure that we can manage to identify the most effective compound against TB,” she said.
SGU Vice Director (Research), Dr. Kholis Abdurachim Audah, who is also part of the joint research team, said they are exploring the development of the extract from mangroves.
“We know that Indonesia and Borneo share various resources in terms of mangrove species, so we have a common objective to explore the potential of mangrove as a source of medicine,” he said.
He said they are testing on TB bacteria and other viruses originating from Sabah.
“Later, we hope we can use similar approach to use extracts obtained from Indonesia and Sabah against TB and dengue viruses in both countries,” he said.
Dr Kholis said there are plenty medicinal potential in mangrove, for example, it can be an antibacterial and antibiotics.
“So far we have also screened our mangrove extracts towards several strains of bacterias namely Escerhichia Coli (E.Coli), Staphylococus Aureous (S.Aureus) and even Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus (MRSA) which is very dangerous to society,” he said.
