Cassandra Quave (it rhymes with “wave”) is an assistant professor in Emory’s Center for the Study of Human Health and in the School of Medicine’s Department of Dermatology. She is also a member of the Emory Antibiotic Resistance Center.

The Florida native looks at home in the sweltering heat, standing behind a pick-up truck parked on one of the dirt roads that winds through Ichauway. She tilts a straw cowboy hat back from her face and waves off a flurry of gnats. Her utility belt bristles with shears and a hunting knife. The unfolded gate of the truck bed serves as her desk, as she wrangles a leafy vine of passionflower into a wooden plant press.

Cassandra Quave works at her pickup truck "desk" alongside Kier Klepzig, director of Ichauway's Joseph W. Jones Ecological Research Center.

“The Cherokee pounded the roots of passionflower into a poultice to draw out pus from wounds, boils and abscesses,” Quave says. “Everywhere I look in this ecosystem I see plants that have a history of medicinal use by native peoples. The resin of the pine trees all around us, the fronds from the ferns beneath them and the roots of those beautiful yellow flowers over there — black-eyed Susans — were all used to treat wounds and sores.”

While she was an Emory undergraduate herself, Quave did field research under the guidance of Larry Wilson, an ecologist in the Department of Environmental Sciences. She traveled to the Amazon to study the practices of Peruvian traditional healers — a life-changing experience.

She dropped her plan to go to medical school and pursued a PhD in biology, focused on medical ethnobotany. Today Quave is a world leader in the field, studying how indigenous people use plants in their healing practices, to uncover promising candidates for new drugs.

Tracking down ancient medicinal plants for analysis.

Among her recently published work: The discovery that the Brazilian peppertree — used for hundreds of years by Amazonian healers to treat skin infections — also contains an extract that can disarm antibiotic-resistant bacteria. The extract works not by killing the bacteria, but by blocking its ability to produce toxins.

“Using traditional plant remedies as an exploratory tool, we’re getting closer and closer to finding new ways to address major medical problems,” Quave says.

She knows first-hand about the dangers of antibiotic-resistant bacteria — a growing international threat that annually causes at least two million illnesses and 23,000 deaths in the United States alone. Quave’s right leg had to be amputated at mid-shin when she was a toddler, due to skeletal birth defects. Shortly afterward, a life-threatening case of staph (MRSA) broke out on her stump, forcing her return to the hospital for months of treatment. Ultimately, her leg had to be cut off even shorter, leaving her with a heavily scarred stump that lacks fatty tissue, making prosthetics less comfortable.

A copy of the research team’s ambitious goals for the three-week Ichauway trip rests on the truck’s tailgate: A list of around 200 species of plants to collect and process for study. They are among the species that local Native Americans used to treat sores, non-healing wounds, burns and infections of the skin and soft tissues. The list was drawn from the work of other ethnobotanists, including Dan Moerman, at the University of Michigan.