Professor Monique Simmonds was almost waiting for the phone call in her laboratory in Kew Gardens, south-west London.
Lawyers investigating the death of 15-year-old Natasha Ednan-Laperouse had already sought his help as one of the country’s top plant detectives.
Natasha, from London, had died from a severe allergic reaction she suffered on board a flight to Nice in July 2016 after eating a baguette bought at Pret A Manger.
At the time, it was unclear what had happened and investigators asked Professor Simmonds to examine the contents of Natasha’s stomach to establish what had caused her death.
Professor Monique Simmonds OBE Deputy Director of Science at Roayal Botanic Gardens, Kew
The Palm House at Kew Gardens in Greater London
The contents were compared to 8.5 million samples from the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew’s plant compound database. This found a match with sesame, which Natasha was very allergic to but which was not listed on the baguette label.
A few months later, Natasha’s father, Nadim, visited the Kew laboratory with a seed taken from the dental appliance Natasha was wearing when she died. He wanted Professor Simmonds to confirm if he was sesame.
“From the stomach contents, we had already identified sesamin (a sesame compound),” says Professor Simmonds, deputy chief scientist at Kew. ‘When we examine brace foods, we find much more sesame. What became clear at the 2018 inquest into Natasha’s death was that the baguette dough was made with sesame.’
This painstaking plant detective work is not unusual for Professor Simmonds, who has worked at Kew since 1985.
At the request of police or coroners, help solve crimes by analyzing surrounding fauna and flora for clues, or stomach contents for a poison or allergen that may be related to plants and fungi.
Professor Simmonds and her team are also using Kew Gardens’ resources to find “natural” solutions to some of the biggest health problems, including malaria and antibiotic resistance.
The scale of the resources at Kew is mind-boggling. The gardens employ 470 scientists, have a fully equipped chemistry laboratory and more than 2.4 billion seeds, which are stored in jars at -15°C in vaults in Wakehurst, near Gatwick.
Professor Simmonds and her team are also using Kew Gardens’ resources to find ‘natural’ solutions to some of our biggest health problems.
Professor Simmonds has worked at Kew since 1985 and carries out plant detective work.
Known as the Millennium Seed Bank, it has taken 24 years to develop and includes 40,000 wild plant species from 190 countries and territories (representing more than 10 percent of the world’s flora), making it the world’s most most diverse seeds in the world. world.
Kew also has a library of 8.5 million dried plant samples collected over the past 200 years, a Fungarium containing over a million dried species of fungi, as well as live plants seen by visitors to the gardens.
“These collections are for conservation purposes, but also so that we can look at the chemistry of the plants and find medicinal properties,” says Professor Simmonds. There is enormous unexplored potential in using plants as medicines. “Although more than 25,000 of the world’s plants have documented medicinal uses since 2000 BC in early texts from Persia and China, only about 200 have been incorporated into Western medicine,” says Professor Simmonds.
Natasha Ednan-Laperouse died after eating a Pret A Manger sandwich
Natasha photographed on a British Airways flight, moments before she died
She believes greater use of plants in medicine could be a “game changer.” For some medical conditions the use of plants is already established.
“For example, vincristine from the pink periwinkle plant and taxanes from the bark of the Pacific yew have anti-cancer properties and have become commonly used chemotherapy drugs in the NHS,” Professor Simmonds says.
And while plants may be the cause of allergies, they may provide a remedy in the future, he says.
«Lipid transport proteins, for example, are found in various fruits, vegetables, nuts and cereals to protect the plant, but they can also cause serious allergic reactions. There are other proteins in plants called gibberellin-regulated proteins (GRPs) associated with multiple fruit allergies.’
Fruits that contain GRP include peaches, sweet cherries, oranges, pomegranates, and strawberries.
To prevent these allergies, plant breeders could, in theory, reduce the levels of these proteins, says Professor Simmonds.
One of her current research projects is investigating plants as a way to treat inflammation, implicated in everything from heart disease and dementia to cancer, asthma and aging.
Professor Simmonds and Professor Clare Bryant, a consultant in clinical pharmacology at the University of Cambridge, are investigating plants that can trigger and attenuate inflammation.
Current treatments, including anti-inflammatories like ibuprofen, slow the production of prostaglandins (hormone-like chemicals that play a role in the body’s inflammatory response), but do not address the underlying causes and can also lead to side effects such as ulcers. of stomach.
“We believe that rather than a single drug to treat inflammation, a multifactorial approach, using drugs and plant compounds together, would be better,” says Professor Simmonds.
She and Professor Bryant are using artificial intelligence (AI) to identify plants and fungi that can influence inflammatory pathways as we age.
“We are starting with traditional Chinese medicines that are already thought to reduce inflammation, to show if they work,” explains Professor Simmonds.
‘We want to understand which receptors they act on and whether more than one plant is needed to have a protective effect.
Current research projects include investigating plants as a way to treat inflammation. The Palm House at Kew Gardens
Last year, Kew scientists identified thousands of plant species that could be potential new treatments for malaria. In the photo, Kew Gardens
“With a better understanding of inflammation and the help of AI, we hope to be able to identify new plants that contain ingredients that may protect against inflammation.”
He adds: ‘Herbs that show potential include rosemary, turmeric, sweet balsam and liquorice.
“This could be important for a range of diseases, from cancer to dementia, and we hope that within five to ten years our research will lead to new plant treatments for inflammation.”
Progress is made all the time. Last year, Kew scientists identified thousands of plant species that could be potential new treatments for malaria, one of the world’s leading causes of death.
Resistance to the two main drug treatments: quinine and artemisinin (both derived from plants) is increasing. In a study published last May, scientists reviewed 21,000 species from three plant families, some of which are found in the UK, and estimated that more than a third could have anti-malarial properties.
“Our results highlight the enormous unexplored potential of plants to produce new medicines,” said researcher Adam Richard-Bollans.
“There are an estimated 343,000 known plant species, many of which have not been subject to any scientific evaluation for their medicinal uses.”
But a new treatment is not just about identifying a plant for its medicinal properties.
Scientists also need to determine how it should be prepared and taken, and the required dosage.
Another Kew study, Remembered Remedies, investigated “old wives’ tales” before 1948, obtained from interviews with people in rural areas from Scotland to Cornwall in the 1980s.
This included the herb ajuga to treat coughs. “When we first made an extract from these plants and tested it, we got nothing,” says Professor Simmonds.
“So we did more research work, even talking to herbalists who use these plants, and found that picking them in spring rather than fall, for example, using specific parts of the plant (and using it fresh, rather than dried) marked the difference to how effective it was.’
Meanwhile, for Nadim Ednan-Laperouse, Professor Simmonds’ work provided the answers, however painful, that he and his wife, Tanya, had been searching for.
“By analyzing the remains of Natasha’s brace, we were able to prove beyond a doubt that she had eaten sesame and that this caused fatal anaphylaxis,” he says.
‘She thought the baguette was safe to eat. She wasn’t.
“Having that information has made big changes for the two to three million people who suffer from food allergies in this country.”
In 2021, the introduction of Natasha’s Law meant that all food retailers must now display full ingredient and allergen labeling on pre-packaged products for direct sale. Nadim says: “Every day you protect people with food allergies from life-threatening allergic reactions.”