PROMINENT Jamaican scientist Dr Henry Lowe has been made a member of the prestigious American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) based on the quality of scientific research, particularly in the area of prostate cancer.

Dr Lowe was nominated by Angela Brodie, professor of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics, and Amy Fulton, professor of Pathology, both outstanding medical research scientists from the University of Maryland Medical School, a news release from the Environmental Health Foundation said.

Membership in the AACR is only offered to outstanding scientific and medical researchers from all over the world, who can be sponsored by existing members in good standing.

Dr Lowe's membership became effective in the last quarter of 2011.

The AACR was founded in 1907 by a group of 11 physicians and scientists interested in research "to further the scientific investigation and spread the knowledge about the management of cancer". It is the oldest and largest scientific organisation in the world focused on every aspect of high-quality, innovative cancer research.

The AACR's reputation for scientific breadth and excellence attracts the premier researchers in the field. Its programmes and services foster the exchange of knowledge and new ideas among scientists dedicated to cancer research, provide training opportunities for the next generation of cancer researchers, and increase public understanding of cancer.

Dr Lowe, who won the Observer Business Leader Award for 2006, gained worldwide attention in 2010 after he announced that he and his research partner, Dr Joseph Bryant, had extracted powerful anti-cancer compounds from the Jamaican Ball Moss.

The chemical compounds from Ball Moss or Old Man's Beard, they said, has been demonstrated to kill prostate cancer and other cancer cells in vitro and in vivo.

That research has so far resulted in them being awarded one major patent with four others under review.

Since then, Dr Lowe has been invited to participate in a number of major drug development and cancer research meetings and conferences, among them the Ehrlich II Second World Conference on Magic Bullets in Germany which brings together clinical and pharmacological scientists. He was also specially invited to the BIT's eighth Annual Congress of International Drug Discovery Science and Technology in Beijing, China in October 2010.

Last week, Dr Lowe presented his latest novel cancer research work on Cycloartane-3,24,25,-triol, a cancer chemo preventative agent isolated from the Ball Moss, at the AACR Prostate Cancer Meeting in Orlando, Florida.

Much of his research is geared to the commercial development of drugs for the management of cancers with special reference to prostate and breast cancers. As a result of his filed patents, Dr Lowe has started to publish details of several of his research findings at scientific conferences and in peer reviewed journals.

As a medicinal chemist, he has designed and synthesised several analogues/derivatives from the bioactive isolates of some Jamaican medicinal plants, which, he said, show great promise as cancer drug candidates.

Dr Lowe is a member of several major scientific organisations, including the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Harvard Medical School Post-graduate Association, American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists, and the American Chemical Society. He is also a life member of the New York Academy of Sciences and a fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine, United Kingdom.

Dr Lowe is an adjunct professor in the Department of Medicine, University of Maryland School of Medicine in the USA and a distinguished adjunct professor of Ethno-medicinal Chemistry at Jamaica's University of Technology (UTech).

He is the founder and executive chairman of the Bio-Tech R&D Institute of which UTech is a shareholder. The Bio-Tech R&D Institute was established for the purpose of helping Jamaican scientists and technologists to use science for wealth creation.