I’ve been wanting to try piperine as a potential cure for my vitiligo, but had a hard time finding it in St. Louis. Last weekend I finally came across a little store in the Central West End called, Golden Grocer.

As an Associate Professor in the Department of Neurology at the Oregon Health & Science University, what sparked your interest in finding a cure for vitiligo?
My field of expertise is the identification of potential new drugs from natural sources e.g plants used in traditional medicines.  I started working on finding a treatment for vitiligo while I was employed at the Pharmacy Department, Kings College London, University of London.  This arose as a result of Maxine Whitton, then Chair of the UK vitiligo society, contacting me to see if I could …

I’m including the following article today as a prelude to my next blog. Presently, I am conducting an interview with Dr. Amala Soumyanath.  She discovered that piperine, the alkaloid in black pepper responsible for its pungency, stimulated the proliferation of melanocytes in cell cultures.
04/09/08 Portland, Ore.
OHSU and AdPharma, Inc. announce collaboration to develop promising topical agent for vitiligo, a skin pigmentation disorder that afflicts as many as a 100 million people worldwide
Oregon Health & Science University has licensed a family of compounds derived from black pepper extract  on which it …