The foxglove is one of the most poisonous plants in nature. In addition, they’re the basis for many heart medications, earning the plant the nickname “kill or cure”. Kill or cure is the name of a new charity dedicated to fighting algorithmic injustice, data harvesting and Big Tech’s growing dominance. Cori Crider, one of Foxglove’s founders and directors, explains in a smooth Texas drawl, “We want to make technology accessible to all, not just a few privileged individuals.” He said that the scale and nature of how states and companies use data power over everyone needed to be exposed – and some people just needed to be sued. Foxglove Technology
Foxglove chemical compounds revealed by two new studies
Recently, Wang’s team published a pair of papers describing the characteristics of cardiac glycosides in two foxglove species: Digitalis purpurea, which blooms purple in many gardens; and Digitalis lanata, which is grown for medicinal purposes. Wang says this kind of research is essential because we first have to know the exact structure of natural compounds before we can explore their medicinal properties. The first paper was published online in January by the Journal of Chromatography A, describing methods for determining the exact mass and structure of cardiac glycosides, and comparing compounds found in Digitalis purpurea and Digitalis lanata. In a second study, published online in March in the journal Data in Brief, the researchers provide additional information on characteristics of cardiac glycosides in both species. “We found that the cardiac glycosides in each of the samples were very different,” Wang says. Researchers from the University at Buffalo Department of Chemistry contributed to both of the studies. “In the industrial strain grown for medicine, you see much higher quantities of cardiac glycosides with much greater diversity. This shows the adaptability of plants and how versatile they are as chemists.” Foxglove Technology
Enhancing the foxglove’s natural abilities
Digoxin, a cardiac glycoside, is synthesized by Digitalis lanata for medical purposes. It is toxic in large quantities, but is prescribed sparingly in small doses to treat heart failure and certain abnormalities of the heart rhythm. Digoxin is currently produced in cumbersome ways. Because each foxglove plant produces so little, farmers must grow the crop in large quantities, Wang says. The practice consumes a lot of agricultural land. Wait times are also long. “It takes two years, from the time you plant the seed until you harvest the leaves, and then you have to dry it in the silo,” Wang says. “Then, the powder is crushed into powder, and the compound is extracted and purified using chemical processes.” If Wang’s team can figure out how foxgloves make cardiac glycosides, scientists could leverage that information to explore several improvements. Fast-growing microbes, such as yeast or harmless strains of bacteria, can be engineered to produce cardiac glycosides more quickly. Scientists could genetically engineer foxgloves to produce more digoxin, increasing farm efficiency and releasing land for other crops.
Theodora:
Both the public and private sectors use technology to make huge, consequential decisions about people’s lives, such as who gets a visa, which university a student gets into, who gets hired, and who gets fired. Despite this, many of these systems are still developed behind closed doors without proper transparency or consultation with the public. Foxglove uses litigation and public campaigning to ensure that technology is used fair in both the public and private sectors. In many of our early judicial review cases, we challenged unfair or discriminatory government algorithms on the basis of transparency. Consider the Home Office visa streaming algorithm, which has been in use since 2015. Until 2019, nobody even knew the algorithm existed – but it made unfair decisions about who could visit this country based in part on the applicant’s nationality. We have recently been supporting the Greater Manchester Coalition of Disabled People to challenge a government algorithm that disproportionately targets disabled people for benefits fraud investigations. The Department for Work and Pensions has repeatedly refused to provide more information about how the system works. We expose these secretive systems through investigations, litigation and campaigns that challenge them when they are unfair.
