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Stem cell & plant study yields significant results
View(s):- Next goal to develop commercially-viable drug leads to benefit patients
By Kumudini Hettiarachchi
Stem cells have fascinated Emeritus Professor Preethi Udagama and it was when she attended a workshop that she wondered on the use of this valuable material on another aspect of her research, plant extracts.
Prof. Udagama, retired Senior Professor of Zoology, Department of Zoology & Environment Sciences, Faculty of Science, University of Colombo, was launching work with plant extracts and stem cells and on the lookout for a doctoral student, when on her table landed an interesting curriculum vitae (CV).
It was of Vindya Udalamaththa who was armed with a Master’s degree, and looking through her CV, Prof. Udagama found that she was not just a nerd but also a karate and dance champion.
Having applied for and secured a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF), for Prof. Udagama the stage was set for the guru-gola venture in 2015.
Dr. Vindya Udalamaththa working in the laboratory
That partnership has yielded four patents in 2021, 2022 and 2023.
Numerous have also been the awards garnered including the 2025 NSF Research Award for Dr. Udalamaththa’s PhD Project; the 2024 Best Paper Award at the SLIIT International Conference on Advances in Sciences and Humanities; and the 2016 Presidential Award for Scientific Publications presented in 2018.
Prof. Preethi Udagama
The research has also found its niche in several international and local peer-reviewed publications and international and local conference papers.
Prof. Udagama and Dr. Udalamaththa look towards the future with an NSF ‘gap-filling’ grant awarded in August 2025 to further advance this blood stem cell research towards the development of a commercially-available product.
This NSF grant has been received by Prof. Udagama in her current position as Professor, Faculty of Humanities and Sciences, SLIIT (Sri Lanka Institute of Information Technology), Malabe, along with matching funds from SLIIT for this project.
Dr. Vindya Udalamaththa
Currently, Dr. Udalamaththa is attached to the Department of Biomedical Sciences of the Asia Pacific Institute of Information Technology (APIIT), Sri Lanka.
In this gap-filling grant, Prof. Lallindra Gooneratne, Professor in Haematology, Faculty of Medicine, University of Colombo, is collaborating with Prof. Udagama who is the Principal Investigator and Dr. Udalamaththa, the Co-investigator.
We look back at the first stem cell project which resulted in four patents, with possible drug leads cued from Sri Lankan traditional medicine, as Prof. Udagama says that importantly it contributed to human capital development – a PhD being awarded to a young woman scientist.
This project was ‘Proliferative Differentiation and Toxicological Effects of Selected Herbal Preparations on In House Established Human Mesenchymal and Haematopoietic Stem Cell Lines’.
While the Principal Supervisor for that project was Prof. Udagama; the Co-supervisors were Prof. Sumedha Wijeratne & Prof. Preethi Soysa of the Faculty of Medicine, University of Colombo.
The collaborators were: the late Dr. Udaya Samaratunga (Department of Ayurveda Basic Principles, Gampaha Wickramarachchi Ayurveda Institute, University of Kelaniya); Prof. Lalith Jayasinghe (National Institute of Fundamental Studies, Kandy); Senior Prof. Athula Kaluarachchi (Chair Professor of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Faculty of Medicine, University of Colombo); and Prof. Naima Moustaid-Moussa (Texas Tech University, United States of America).
Before delving into the technicalities of the research, Dr. Udalamaththa says that she used stem cells as the platform to test some Sri Lankan traditional medicines made of plant distillates.
Guru-gola bond: Prof. Preethi Udagama (on the right) and Dr. Vindya Udalamaththa at the 2024 NSF Research Awards ceremony
The stem cells were tissue stem cells (human Mesenchymal Stem Cells – hMSCs) and blood stem cells (human Haematopoietic Stem Cells – hHSCs).
The plant extracts were:
- Mature leaf concentrate of the Sri Lankan wild type Carica papaya (papaw)
- A distillate of Ficus benghalensis, known in Sinhala as nuga
- A distillate of Mallotus repandus, known in Sinhala as masbadda, & Vernonia Zeylanica, known in Sinhala as pupula.
(Distillates are products obtained from the distillation of plant material, involving heating with water or steam and then condensing the vapour back into a liquid.)
Looking at the stem cells, Dr. Udalamaththa says that tissue stem cells (hMSCs) can differentiate into osteoblasts (which help bones grow); adipocytes (which store fat); and chondrocytes (which make the structural components of cartilage, the connective tissue in joints), to name some.
Blood stem cells (hHSCs), meanwhile, are ‘immature’ or ‘primitive’ cells which have the potential of developing into all types of blood cells, including white blood cells, red blood cells and platelets, she explains.
Having secured the essential ethical clearance, she obtained the stem cells required for her research from umbilical cord tissue and cord blood from human post-partum tissue, which was biological waste.
Dr. Udalamaththa explains that what she set out to do was to screen herbal preparations derived from Sri Lankan traditional medicine, for their potential as natural stimulants for human stem cell proliferation and differentiation.
Stem cell and plant distillate experiments in progress
Pointing out that stem cells are special because they can “replicate” (make more cells like themselves) and they can also “become” cells that do different things, she says the first potential is called ‘proliferation’ and the second ‘differentiation’.
“So my objective was to determine whether the chosen plant extracts would aid or deter these processes in stem cells,” says Dr. Udalamaththa, explaining that around 75% of the world’s population uses herbs for their basic healthcare needs. ‘Rasayana’ is the branch of ayurveda for herbal remedies used for tissue regeneration and protective effects.
She also wished to determine the anti-obesity effects of a selected herbal preparation on a mouse model and the chemical characterization of bio-active fractions/distillate. (See box for outcomes)
Now the expertise of teacher and student is focusing on taking the findings in the tome-like doctoral thesis to the bedside of patients – by looking into the production of a herbal medication which could help promote the replication of blood stem cells.
This would be a boon to patients suffering from bleeding disorders including clotting issues, blood cancers and anaemias (not having enough healthy red blood cells or haemoglobin to carry oxygen to the body’s tissues). It could also possibly have a place as a post-chemotherapy supplement to increase the number of healthy blood stem cells for better recovery.
If this study brings forth positive results, it could put Sri Lanka on the world map of health, while bridging the gap between traditional medicine and scientific research.
| Positive outcomes of the research The outcomes of the research titled ‘Proliferative Differentiation and Toxicological Effects of Selected Herbal Preparations on In-house Established Human Mesenchymal and Haematopoietic Stem Cells’ were:
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