Taking Tea at 113th ASM Meeting
Touro Professor and Undergraduate Students Present Anti-Microbial Research at the 113th Annual American Society of Microbiology Conference in Denver, CO
A group of nine undergraduate students, under the leadership of Touro Biology Department Chair and Professor Milton Schiffenbauer and Biology Department Coordinator and Assistant Professor Helene Ver Eecke, presented their published research abstract, The Antiviral Effect of White Tea Polyphenol on May 20th at the 113th General Meeting of the American Society for Microbiology (ASM) in Denver, CO.
Schiffenbauer has been conducting research with students on the antimicrobial effects of white tea since 2007 and has previously attended ASM conferences in Philadelphia (2009), San Diego, and New Orleans (2011).
The research details the effects of the PCS compound extracted from Camellia sinensis tea on bacteriophages, viruses that replicate inside of bacteria. Although these effects were demonstrated in bacterial cultures, and no clinical trials have yet been run, the team believes its findings “suggest that PCS may have positive implications in the inactivation of human pathogenic viruses.”
Eugenia Sava, Amer Alnaqeeb, Nataliia Polataiko, Sanchita Silwal, and Oleg Yefimenko from NYSCAS and Chemda Bernstein, Alan Gross, Refoel Levin, and Esther Saul from Lander College of the Arts and Sciences (LAS) were the students in attendance. Additional Touro students participated in the research but were unable to attend the conference.
