Reading Tea Leaves

Cyclic peptides, discovered in an African tea used to speed labor and delivery, may hold potential as drug-stabilizing scaffolds, antibiotics, and anticancer drugs.

Written byJef Akst

| 3 min read

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In August 1960, Norwegian physician Lorents Gran traveled to the Republic of Congo (now the Democratic Republic of Congo) to join doctors and nurses from about 50 countries in a Red Cross mission to provide medical services to Africans in the months following the nation’s independence from Belgium. Secessionist riots had broken out in the streets, scores of soldier mutinied, battles raged among local tribes, and European doctors and nurses fled in droves. “The country had not yet any indigenous doctors or medical personnel to run their clinics,” Gran recalls. “It was chaos all through the country.”

Gran was sent to a hospital in Luluabourg (now Kananga) to tend to casualties of a war between two related tribes—the Lulua, traditional settlers of the town, and ...

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Meet the Author

Jef Akst
Jef (an unusual nickname for Jennifer) got her master’s degree from Indiana University in April 2009 studying the mating behavior of seahorses. After four years of diving off the Gulf Coast of Tampa and performing behavioral experiments at the Tennessee Aquarium in Chattanooga, she left research to pursue a career in science writing. As The Scientist's managing editor, Jef edited features and oversaw the production of the TS Digest and quarterly print magazine. In 2022, her feature on uterus transplantation earned first place in the trade category of the Awards for Excellence in Health Care Journalism. She is a member of the National Association of Science Writers.
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