CORNELL UNIVERSITY BIODIVERSITY LABORATORY
OPENS AT PUNTA CANA RESORT AND CLUB
Press Release courtesy of the Pearson Group March 2001
Press Release courtesy of the Pearson Group March 2001
Also present were Dr. Eloy Rodriguez, Cornell University’s James A. Perkins Professor of Student Biodiversity Studies and Director of the Cornell University Biodiversity Laboratory, and Weill Cornell Medical College’s Complementary and Integrative Medicine Director Dr. Mary Charlson, and Clinical Director Dr. Mitchell Gaynor.
Within the 5,000 square-foot laboratory, which is sited on the edge of the Punta Cana Ecological Reserve set aside by the resort’s developers, students and faculty from Cornell University and universities in the Dominican Republic identify, isolate and perform research on Caribbean island plants, animals, marine and microbial organisms that may offer promise as the foundations for new medicines. Part of their scientific method includes ethno-medicine research, which involves the collection of information from citizens in rural villages who for generations have used natural compounds as “home remedies” and the scientific study of those compounds to determine their make-up.
Cornell’s involvement came about through Kheel, an alumnus of the university and an active supporter of its distance learning and ecological programs. The laboratory is uniquely linked to both Cornell University and to the Weill Medical College of Cornell University’s newly established Center for Complementary and Integrative Medicine in New York City.
Director of the biodiversity laboratory is Dr. Eloy Rodriguez, the inspiration behind the plan to build the research facility at Punta Cana. It was during a lecture at Cornell in 1998 that Ted Kheel heard Dr. Rodriguez describe the research he and his undergraduate students conducted in the Venezuelan Amazon, where they studied the medicinal value of plants.
“I was fascinated by what he said,” explains Kheel. “We lunched afterwards and I learned more about what he was doing in the field of biodiversity. I asked Eloy ‘could you do the same thing in Punta Cana?’ He said ‘absolutely.’”
Soon afterward, the first group of students arrived to begin research. They were housed at the resort while construction of the building that would become their laboratory and living quarters took place. The $1,000,000 laboratory was built to Cornell’s specifications on a 10-acre site. Grupo Punta Cana maintains the building and provides visiting students and faculty with food and lodging. Sleeping quarters are located on the second floor of the laboratory. Each semester, approximately 16 students and six professors are conducting research at the laboratory.
According to Dr. Rodriguez, the students focus primarily on identifying new anti-cancer drugs and compounds found in plants and animals, including marine organisms, of the Dominican Republic.
“I’m kind of an explorer,” he says. “I take off my lab coat and I put on my hat and go off looking for new medicines from plants and from scorpions and ants - anything that could prove to be a valuable source for new medicines.”
Among the research projects underway include scorpion venom that contains anti-tumor properties and birds that produce antibiotic fluids. In addition to a state-of-the art chemistry laboratory, the facility houses complete ornithology, and marine biology and ethno-medicine laboratories, and the Punta Cana Herbarium.