Developing forestry by-products as a novel therapeutic for parasite control in ruminants

The overarching aim of the proposal is to identify active compounds present in the bark, a forestry by-product, that demonstrate anthelmintic activity, and develop an Activity Index as an objective predictor of anthelmintic activity of bark extracts. This Index will be used to inform large scale bark extract characterisation for their anthelmintic potential to incorporate in sustainable parasite control strategies. To achieve this, we will identify and purify compounds present in the bark extract and will test their anthelmintic activity. We will base the selection of the compounds on preliminary evidence already available to us from previous work, on a detailed literature review and novel work described in this proposal.
The main hypothesis is that extracts from conifer bark samples have variable biological activity in vitro, and this can be quantified and predicted by measuring the level of specific compounds in the extracts.