A Passion for Medicinal Plants: Maung Tin-Wa’s Gifts Support Pharmacognosy and Drug Discovery at UIC
To support UIC’s continued leadership in pharmacognosy research and drug discovery, Tin-Wa and his wife Anna Spielvogel have committed more than $400,000 to the College
In 1970, as a post-doctoral fellow in California, Maung Tin-Wa was being recruited by pharmaceutical science laboratories in the UK, Norway, France, and Germany. He turned them all down to come to UIC.
“My Ph.D. advisor, Norman Farnsworth [1930-2011], was an expert in pharmacognosy, the discovery of new medicines from plants and other natural sources. He had just been recruited to UIC from the University of Pittsburgh, and he wanted me to set up his new laboratories from scratch,” says Tin-Wa.
For five years, Tin-Wa worked as an assistant professor and lead investigator under Farnsworth’s leadership. During that time, he helped lay the groundwork for what would become the Retzky College of Pharmacy’s Pharmacognosy Institute and the NAPRALERT Database, a comprehensive search platform for global scientific data on medicinal plants. As a result of that early work, UIC was named the only WHO Collaborating Centre for Herbal Medicines in the US in 1981.
To support UIC’s continued leadership in pharmacognosy research and drug discovery, Tin-Wa and his wife, Anna Spielvogel, are committing $250,000 to the College. This gift will add to their previous donations, bringing their giving total to more than $400,000.
“We are extremely grateful to Tin-Wa and Anna for being part of our past, present, and future. Generous gifts like theirs are what has made UIC so successful in pharmacognosy and drug discovery and allow us to continue to find new drugs that will benefit humanity in the future,” says Dean Glen Schumock.
Chun-Tao Che, the Harry H.S. Fong Professor of Pharmacognosy, says supporting pharmacognosy research remains crucial to public health. “Natural products constituted the earliest medicines known to man - and many are in use today. Plants and natural sources will continue to be an important reservoir for new drug discovery in the future.”
Paul Carlier, the Hans W. Vahlteich Chair in Medicinal Chemistry and Director of UICentre – UIC’s drug discovery enterprise, elaborates, saying that “Newly discovered natural products provide inspiration to drug designers, who transform their chemical structures into medicines with improved efficacy and reduced side effects compared to the natural substance. Thus, imparting even greater benefits.”
Che’s lab has used Tin-Wa and Spielvogel’s previous donations to support several research projects on the discovery of bioactive substances from African and Asian medicinal plants.
Che adds that Drs. Tin-Wa and Spielvogel’s generosity goes far beyond financial contributions. “It reflects a sincere belief in the value of pharmacognosy and the study of traditional medicines. Their encouragement has helped sustain me and my team through many years of research and exploration.”
Growing up in Myanmar (then called Burma), Tin-Wa’s path to becoming a distinguished scientist was far from predetermined.
“I am the fourth of five brothers, and I’m the least serious one,” he says, noting that when he was a student at the University of Rangoon, his mother became concerned. “She wanted all her boys to be engineers and scientists, and I was the joker. I dropped out of my honors chemistry program because I wanted to do extracurricular activities like boxing, rowing, and racquet sports such as badminton.”
His mother convinced him to take his academics more seriously and pursue advanced degrees overseas, something she had wanted to do herself but couldn’t. “I said, ‘I promise I’ll earn one graduate degree in the US.’ I thought I’d earn a master’s degree and go back to Myanmar.’”
But a few factors kept Tin-Wa in the US. He had found his niche as a pharmaceutical researcher, and the political situation in Myanmar made a career there unlikely. He had also fallen in love with Spielvogel.
“We met when I was doing my post-doc and she was earning her Ph.D. in biochemistry at the University of California, Riverside. When I took the job at UIC, she decided to join me in Chicago. She found a job doing research at Northwestern,” says Tin-Wa.
An accomplished physician and scientist in her own right, Spielvogel has fond memories of Chicago.
“We made lifelong friends with other scientists at UIC, who we could talk with about our research and big ideas,” she says.
One of those friends was UIC Emeritus Professor of Pharmaceutical Sciences Geoffrey Cordell, who arrived from MIT to work on Farnsworth’s team in the early 1970s. He went on to have many roles at UIC, eventually becoming Assistant Vice Chancellor for Research. Cordell and Tin-Wa traveled to Myanmar in 2013.
“Tin arranged for the two of us to go to Myanmar to deliver some lectures and conduct a workshop on the quality control of medicinal plants at various locations. It was a life highlight and a very memorable experience indeed!” says Cordell.
These days, Cordell attends monthly roundtable discussions hosted by Tin-Wa. Other attendees include Prof. Che and Guido Pauli, the Norman R. Farnsworth Chair of Pharmacognosy. The group talks about current and future pharmacognosy research, with a special focus on plants from Madagascar.
“There are 12,000 plants indigenous to Madagascar, and the climate crisis is causing species of animals and plants to disappear at a very rapid rate. Tin feels it is particularly important to do what we can to identify plants that have been used traditionally in certain cultures but are not well studied,” says Spielvogel.
Medicinal plants have even influenced Tin-Wa’s hobbies. He enjoys watercolor painting, and one of his favorite subjects is the Madagascar periwinkle (Catharanthus roseus), the source of anti-cancer drugs vinblastine (VLB) and vincristine (VCR).
Tin-Wa and Spielvogel also enjoy traveling around the world. The pair have taken many trips to different areas of Myanmar and to Spielvogel’s native country, Austria, including Vienna, where she earned a master’s degree in pharmacy.
It’s clear Tin-Wa has embraced retirement and relishes his role as a philanthropist. “I’m outdated now! I can’t work in a lab and contribute to the science directly. But I can support researchers in other ways. I want to support the new blood.”