This GYA Working Group focuses on biodiversity conservation from a biomedical perspective. The aims are to preserve knowledge about the medicinal properties of different species, create a global knowledge hub for biodiversity and biomedicine, and develop new pharmaceuticals from nature while protecting biodiversity.
The loss of biodiversity minimises the potential for harvesting new medicines and for future medical discoveries. This is due to the interdependence of sustainability of the environment, human wellbeing, and the development of new public health practices. The actions of our group will mobilise the skills and expertise within the GYA to address this issue. In addition, the Bio2Bio working group aims to create practical recommendations for the sustainable use of Earth’s finite natural resources for healing purposes and requests the support from policymakers. With the expanding loss of biodiversity, we must act now to avoid losing new solutions for human-focused problems.
The group is working on forming a network of research activities (finding new lead compounds from indigenous species) and establishing a library of compounds.
2023/24
In February 2025, group co-lead Shymaa Enany organised a very well-attended Biodiversity and Biomedicine Day at 57357 Children’s Cancer Hospital in Cairo, Egypt. Through various presentations, the day focused on the significance of biodiversity in biomedicine, for example in a talk on “Harnessing Egyptian Biodiversity for Antimicrobial Drug Discovery” or another one on “From Biodiversity to
Biomedicine: Exploring the Hepatoprotective Potential of Aloe arborescens”. You can read a report here.
During 2024, this GYA working group organised a youth project led by group co-lead Shymaa Enany. Students from high schools and universities in Egypt were invited to contribute to a poster design competition on “Biodiversity for New Medicine: Youth Grasp” to enhance youth involvement, understanding and awareness of the significance of biodiversity in biomedicine. You can read more here.
In October 2024, group co-lead Shymaa Enany attended the 23rd Human Proteome Organization (HUPO) World Congress in Dresden, Germany. She presented a poster titled “Proteomics and Metabolomics Analyses of Streptococcus agalactiae Isolates from Human and Animal Sources”, which looked at the role of proteomics in understanding bacterial pathogens related to human and animal health. Insights gained by Shymaa from the conference panels will inform the future work of the GYA groups on Biodiversity and on Global Health.
At the GYA Annual General Meeting and Conference in June, the group organised a pre-workshop on Bioinformatics and Seeding SynBio for students from Kigali and GYA members. During the AGM, the group presented their project on protein art; the video can be found here.
In March, group members published a paper on “Biodiversity: the overlooked source of human health” in Trends in Molecular Medicine (Vol. 29/3). In this article, the authors show why biodiversity is essential for human health, highlighting the biomedicine services that are enabled by biodiversity. They also present known as well as novel approaches to promote biodiversity conservation.
In September 2022, Group co-leads Yensi Flores Buesco (University College Cork, Ireland) and Myrtani Pieri (University of Nicosia, Cyprus) conducted a number of activities at the University of Nicosia and in Nicosia, Cyprus. They gave a synthetic Biology in silico workshop to introduce students and lecturers of Cyprus universities to Synthetic biology principles and techniques. They also participated in the European Researcher’s Night and attended local events to inform on policy and society. Read the full report with detailed information about the activities here.
In late June, the “Bridging the Intangible in Science and Arts” session was jointly held by the “Science and Art = Peace and Justice” and “Biodiversity for Survival via Biomedicine” working groups in June in online format. It included the presentation of various Activity Groups projects, including “Protein Art” and “Poetry of Science”. Read the full report here.
In April, the group Co-leads met in Naples, Italy to work together on current projects.
August 2020 – A policy paper by several group members on “Towards policies that capture the expected value of biomolecular diversity for drug discovery, human health, and well‑being” has been published in Biologia Futura in August 2020 (open access). In the paper, the authors argue that there exists an urgent need to over-come economic, disciplinary, national, cultural, and regional barriers, in order to work out innovative measures to create a sustainable future and prevent the mutual extinction of humans and other species. The paper aims to help policy-makers with a characterization of the intrinsic value of biodiversity and its role as a critical foundation for sustainable development, human health, and well-being.
July 2020 – Several group members contributed to a publication on “Biodiversity and Biomedicine: Our Future” (published by Elsevier; behind a paywall). GYA alumni and former group co-leads Dilfuza Egamberdieva (National University of Uzbekistan, Uzbekistan) and Milica Pesic (University of Belgrade, Serbia) co-edited the book with Munir Ozturk from Turkey. The book examines the diverse connections between conserving Earth’s biodiversity and human healthcare, and provides a new outlook on Earth’s animal, plant, and fungi species as vital sources for human health treatments. While there are over 10 million various species on the planet, only 2 million have been discovered and named. This book identifies modern ways to incorporate Earth’s species into biomedical practices and emphasizes the need for biodiversity conservation.
April – Group members have published a paper on medicinal plant extracts in Acta Naurae.
January – The group have issued a call, with the support of the InterAcademy Partnership (IAP), for all IAP member academies to join its network aimed at protecting the molecular diversity needed for novel biomedical discoveries and development. This network aims to create an open, interdisciplinary, international collaborative platform for the exchange of data and knowledge on biodiversity. For details and on how to sign up to the initiative, please see the Call here.
October – Group members have published a paper on “Sharing digitized DNA sequences must balance scientific progress with fair use“.
September – The group organised a Scientific Symposium on Biodiversity and Biomedicine: Sustainability for Human Health within the World Social Science Forum in in Japan. See here for details.
Summer – The group has published a promotional video of their work, filmed by Nerina Finetto/ Traces.Dreams.
January – The group’s first position statement on the ‘Conservation of Biodiversity: Protecting Molecular Diversity and Biomedical Discoveries‘ has been released.
Several members from the Biodiversity group have been involved in the publication of an article titled “Bio2Bio Consortium: Biodiversity, Drug Discovery, and the Future of Global Health – introducing the Biodiversity to Biomedicine Consortium, a Call to Action” in the Journal of Global Health.
