Компания Береста-ЭкоДом, Отделочные материалы, Новые отделочные материалы, Природные отделочные материалы, Экологически чистые отделочные материалы, Экологические отделочные материалы, Стройматериалы, Новые стройматериалы, Экологически чистые стройматериалы, Экологические стройматериалы, Отделочная плитка, Декоративные панели, настенные панели, потолочные панели, Стеновые панели, Потолочные панели, Ремонт, Элитный ремонт, Элитное строительство, Отделка помещений, Береза, Берестяные изделия, Панели из бересты, Берестяные панели, Бетулин, Стельки, Стельки из бересты, Берестяные стельки, строительство, аллергия, Грибковые заболевания ног, настенные панели, плитка, берестяные плитки, лечебные свойства бересты

“We believe we’re sitting on a kind of motherlode of medical possibilities,” says Dr. Robert M. Carlson, a professor of chemistry with the University of Minnesota-Duluth and UMD’s Natural Resources Research Institute (NRRI).

The birch’s role as helpmate was established near the beginnings of time, according to the Anishinabeg or Ojibway people, who call it wiigwaasag. (See related story).

The more familiar name of birch grows from the ancient English words brice or beorch, “to shine bright white.”

Partnership Explores Betulin's Many Uses

The very compound that makes the birch “shine bright white” has been tentatively linked to treatment for such devastating human ailments as some melanomas or cancer, several forms of herpes and even for AIDS.

The compound, betulin, is “about as water soluble as butter,” explains Carlson. It’s probably what makes birch bark such a good preserver of foods and such a great outer layer for canoes and shelters.

Found in abundance within birch bark, betulin can be adapted into the “betulinic acid” that many medical researchers believe may cure or control certain health problems. Betulin itself may also have medicinal properties.

Chemists identified betulin in bark some 200 years ago. Unfortunately, they didn’t realize what they had. “They discovered it too soon,” Carlson says. “They discovered it … and put it on the shelf.”

Carlson figuratively took betulin down from the shelf as he pursued a project to find uses for bark left from industrial use of the birch. He then literally took the compound down a few UMD halls to the laboratory of Dr. M. Reza-ul “Raj” Karim in the biology department.

For 30 years, Karim has researched treatments for herpes viruses. Carlson asked if betulin might be useful to his work.

Along with Carlson and Karim, the NRRI’s Dr. Pavel Krasutsky has been instrumental in initially linking birch to these possibilities. He is examining industrial applications.

“This is the most pure compound that we isolated or extracted with the help of the chemistry department,” says Karim, who also has worked with some plants, used as medicine in Africa, to try to find herpes treatments.

Finding a compound in a natural plant with potential medicinal applications is extremely rare. To find such a potential through the simple serendipity of wanting to efficiently use up some leftover bark … well, that’s nearly unnatural.

“Once in a lifetime, if you hit something like this …” says Karim, letting his open sentence speak to the rarity. “It was out of the blue.”

Carlson and his university and industry colleagues set out to find a more economically, socially and environmentally valuable use for bark.

UMD’s Natural Resources Research Institute, through which Carlson works, often teams up with private or public enterprises to find economic opportunities with environmentally sound practices, says NRRI Director Michael J. Lalich. The institute, established in 1983, also performs government-funded research to lay the groundwork for good regional decision-making.

Many NRRI researchers explore forest resources. NRRI helped to improve a process that uses products from the tamarack tree to enhance printing capabilities and for bio-medical uses relating to cell separation. The LAREX Co. in Grand Rapids, Minnesota, now uses some of this research. NRRI researchers also are helping to develop a fast-growing hybrid poplar that can be sown on normally unused farmland, which could provide an ample tree supply for industrial needs while reducing the need to harvest natural forests. Using the whole tree efficiently is an NRRI aim.

About 15 percent of birch bark is betulin. It can be felt as the almost powdery residue one finds either on bark or just within its paper-thin and thicker layers. That makes birch bark “a single pure source of a single pure compound,” an incredible rarity, says Carlson.

Like other naturally occurring compounds, betulin may end up with none or fewer of the detrimental side effects from synthetic compounds, according to Carlson.

A researcher at the University of Illinois in Chicago about a year ago labeled betulinic acid from betulin as a potential weapon against melanoma tumors, which annually affect an estimated 34,100 Americans and cause 7,200 deaths. That researcher determined that 50 pounds of bark might produce 100 doses of betulinic acid.

Birch as a healing resource isn’t new. Along with the 5,300-year-old mummified remains of a man in the Alps was found birch fungus, piptoporus betulinus, the mildly toxic properties of which are speculated to have given this ancient traveler temporary relief from intestinal parasites. Ancient woodlands people molded wetted birch bark into a form-fitting cast on broken bones. And birch sugar, taken as lozenges or gum, has reduced the occurrence of ear infections in children in research at the University of Oulu in Finland.

Overall, Carlson predicts, this cooperative effort might “reduce waste and at the same time add jobs and other value.”

The discoveries are far from over for the popular tree of poetry, often immortalized in story and song. This giving tree seems destined to deliver more gifts.

“Birch bark, which paper companies throw away, we can have lots of beneficial use of it,” predicts Karim. “Some day, I’ll talk to you about what else we have in mind. I can’t tell you the secrets!”

For Carlson, the chemist, a mystery yet remains. The mystery lies on the forest floor, where he’s often seen the bark shell of a birch intact long after its center rotted.

“We still haven’t totally solved,” he says, “the riddle of why it doesn’t decompose.”

Protector, preserver, provider

It is said that those familiar black “scars” on the bark of Birch come from the time when the tree protected Wenaboozhoo, sometimes called Naniboujou, from the talons of enraged Thunder Beings.

The man-spirit protector of the Anishinabeg scaled a cliff to the Thunderbirds’ nest and killed their young, trying to protect the Anishinabe (sometimes Anishinaabe) people from the frightful storms that the Thunder Beings tossed down. He also stole some of their powerful feathers.

Wenaboozhoo fled down the cliff when the adults returned, and he took refuge inside a hollowed birch. It fell with its opening to the ground and Wenaboozhoo protected within. The Thunder Beings couldn’t breach the bark despite their terrible tearing. Eventually they left, and Wenaboozhoo emerged unharmed.

Wenaboozhoo declared Birch a friend to humans, a helpmate. And the man-manitou gave a special gift to Birch. To this day, its bark endures even long after the tree has fallen and its center decayed.

Because of this, a great respect must be given to Birch, explains David Aubid, teacher of the Ojibway language at the University of Minnesota-Duluth.

Tobacco must be given to the tree before it’s cut down or its bark taken for the many, many uses found by the Anishinabeg. David describes how his mentor taught him to search for a birch, and then to reach high up and carefully slice a right angle into the first layer of bark. When this was pulled back, if the bark cracked, it could not be taken. But if the bark were supple and bent without break, then the proper gifts and words could be given and the bark removed from the tree. Skillfully done, the tree will not die.

For the woodlands people, like those who lived around Lake Superior, Birch held a pervasive importance similar to that of Buffalo for the people of the Great Plains. It could become the durable skin of their houses or of their canoes. It sometimes provided protective outer clothing. Birch bark could be used to help winnow and later its preservative qualities protected the harvest of manoomin, or wild rice, and of berries through the winter. Some still know how to fold bark into a liquid-tight pot that can withstand even boiling water for cooking.

Ever ready to help, Birch’s quick ability to ignite was crucial when a fire meant life or death. To those who knew Birch well, medicine could be made from its parts. Once, it is said, sugar flowed freely from Birch and Maple. Now that gift comes only with much work.

Wonderfully artistic baskets made by the Anishinabeg from birch bark could preserve everything from the umbilical cord of an infant to crucial foodstuffs for long winters. Sometimes a layer of the bark became paper for the Anishinabeg and then the birch preserved something as important as food - knowledge.

When he hears about the possibilities for Birch being studied by chemists and others, that doesn't surprise David Aubid. The Anishinabeg are long familiar with this helpmate. “There’s a whole science to using birch bark,” David says, not referring at all to university science.

Birch was among the three trees claimed in perpetuity by the Anishinabeg people from Lake Superior when they signed treaties ceding certain lands to the government of the United States. Harvesting rights throughout those ceded territories were retained for Birch, Cedar and Maple - all considered crucial for the people’s survival.

This is just some of the story of Wiiwaasag, of Birch. There are many stories that can be told only when the days are shorter and the waters frozen.

Betulin, a powdery substance in the outer bark of the birch tree, has been shown to help wounds heal faster and cut inflammation. Many cosmetic companies, touting it as a skin toner and restorer, add birch bark extract to various products. And a birch bark compound, betulinic acid, is being tested as a treatment for melanoma and other serious diseases.

Yet despite its medicinal potentials, the white bark is usually burned once the birch trees are harvested for lumber.

"This is a miracle which nature synthesized for us and we are burning this miracle like cheap fuel," Krasutsky said.

But that's changing, thanks to a partnership between a paper company, an energy company and University of Minnesota-Duluth's Natural Resources Research Institute (NRRI), which houses Krasutsky's laboratory.

NaturNorth Technologies LLC, formed in 2000 by NRRI, Potlatch Corp. and Synertec, has developed a patented process to cost-effectively isolate pure betulin and other compounds from birch bark in very large quantities. Building on university research, NaturNorth scientists also have patented a way to convert betulin to betulinic acid.

The partners, whose venture is based in Duluth, are hoping the demand for birch bark compound will grow and turn their venture into a profitable one.

"It could be a nice income stream. The university is ... getting less state support, so we're looking at ways to get better value out of its intellectual property," said Michael Lalich, NRRI director.

Potlatch, a wood products and paper producer, can contribute raw material - at least 100,000 pounds of birch bark daily. The bark yields about 10 percent betulin, "so we literally can get tons of this stuff a day," said Robert Carlson, a university chemistry professor who is working on the project.

Once the compounds are isolated, scientists can produce new derivatives to expand the range of potential uses. That's how NaturNorth creates betulinic acid from betulin.

NaturNorth, which has only small test production capabilities, pays a company in Prince Edward Island, Canada, to do the large-scale production work and another in Chicago to do smaller-scale derivative work, mostly for cosmetics use.

Although birch bark extracts already are used in some cosmetics - including products by Estee Lauder, Elizabeth Arden, Almay and many smaller companies - NaturNorth offers the pure compounds found in the bark. The company recently signed a contract to supply to International Specialty Products, a New Jersey company that sells specialty chemicals and mineral products to cosmetic companies.

"They have good access, a large sales force and, we believe, the ability to bring our product lines into all the major cosmetic companies with credibility," said Dave Gibson, a consultant in charge of commercial development for NaturNorth.

To get to this point, however, NaturNorth had to find a way to remove the small amount of betulinic acid that occurs naturally in birch bark before it could offer any compounds to the cosmetics industry. Unilever NV had patented the use of betulinic acid in cosmetics and licensed the exclusive worldwide patent rights to Premier Specialties Inc., of Middlesex, N.J. Premier has sold birch bark extract to the cosmetics industry since the mid-1990s.

NaturNorth expects to benefit from supplying pure birch bark compounds other than betulinic acid for use in cosmetics. But the ability to isolate and derive betulinic acid from the pure compounds - especially changing the betulin molecule to create betulinic acid in large quantities - is what has Krasutsky thinking of white gold.

Betulinic acid has been explored as a potential treatment for skin cancer for more than a decade. Betulin, its derivatives and other birch bark compounds also are being tested for effectiveness in treating HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), which can cause severe cold-like symptoms and pneumonia.

In addition to their other patents, Carlson, Krasutsky and colleagues have patented the use of betulin to treat the blisters caused by herpes, and have other patent applications pending.

Carlson said NaturNorth hopes to supply betulinic acid and its derivatives to other scientists doing clinical tests on disease treatments, and, ultimately - if the tests are successful - becoming the supplier when the products are commercialized.

No human testing has been conducted yet on betulinic acid as a treatment for melanoma, HIV or RSV, he said, but those tests are planned once researchers get regulatory approval.