OXFORD, Miss. - When scientists and regulatory officials from around the world gather in Oxford later this month, their discussions promise to play a major role in ensuring that dietary supplements remain safe and effective for millions of consumers.

The 6th Oxford International Conference on the Science of Botanicals, set for April 30-May 3, brings nearly 150 researchers and others together to discuss the latest studies on the safety and quality of botanical dietary supplements. The meeting is hosted by the National Center for Natural Products Research, a unit of the University of Mississippi School of Pharmacy, in cooperation with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition.

Since beginning as a workshop for about 40 participants only a few years ago, the conference has drawn the attention of an entire industry, said Roy Upton, president of American Herbal Pharmacopoeia and a member of the conference's scientific program committee. 

"The Science of Botanicals conference provides one of the most valuable scientific forums in the country for bringing to the forefront the most seminal issues facing the herbal products industry," Upton said. "No other annual event addresses issues of botanical identity and analytical assessment as comprehensively as this, encompassing both domestic and international issues. It may be the most important symposium of its kind in the U.S."

For the first time, this year's conference is co-sponsored by China's Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica/CAS and India's Council of Scientific and Industrial Research.

"Most of the work in this area is being done internationally," said Ikhlas Khan, assistant director of NCNPR and coordinator of the center's botanical research efforts. "We cannot solve the problems of authenticating and setting standards for these products unless we work with the people who are doing the work in China and India and other parts of the world."

 The topics for this year's conference include the authentication, identification and processing of botanical materials; the cultivation and supply of raw materials; assessing the quality and safety of botanicals; and regulatory issues.

Speakers include leading researchers from industry, academia, nonprofit institutions and government agencies. Many of the discussions focus on the latest scientific findings about various botanical products, but the meeting's scope goes far beyond science, Khan said.

"There is a lot of science presented here, but there is a lot more than that," he said. "This is a networking opportunity for the scientists and regulatory people from the FDA, from China and from India to get together and discuss important issues face-to-face. This really is the one time a year that they can all get together and talk about the latest developments in the field."

The meetings are critical to helping regulatory agencies stay current with the latest research, said Jeanne Rader, director of the Division of Bioanalytical Chemistry, a division of the FDA's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition.

"Assessments of dietary supplement safety and claims need to have a sound scientific basis," said Rader, also a member of the conference's scientific program committee. "For dietary supplements containing botanical ingredients, development of this science base is especially problematic because of these ingredients' unique features, including the complexity of their constituents, variability due to source, lack of available reference materials and manufacturing controls and new and rapidly expanding uses in the marketplace."

The conference begins with registration at 3 p.m. April 30 at the Oxford Conference Center. Margaret Chesney, deputy director of the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine within the National Institutes of Health, is to deliver the keynote address at 5 p.m., and regular sessions begin at 8:30 a.m. May 1.

All sessions are open to the media, and organizers are available for interviews. 
For a full schedule, Click Here

The National Center for Natural Products Research is the nation's only university research center devoted to improving human health and agricultural productivity through the discovery, development and commercialization of pharmaceuticals and agrochemicals derived from plants, marine organisms and other natural products. UM researchers at the center are studying hundreds of natural products that show promise to help treat a broad range of human illnesses, including cancer, AIDS, malaria, fungal infections, tuberculosis and emerging tropical diseases. For more information on the center and its programs, including the FDA partnership on botanicals, go to http://www.olemiss.edu/depts/pharmacy/ncnpr.

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