By Erwin Oliva
INQUIRER.net

DR. Baldomero Olivera, a Filipino award-winning scientist who has discovered new drugs for pain, Alzheimer’s and epilepsy in the Philippine wildlife, is set to visit the country next month.

Technology Business Incubator and the Brain Gain Network have invited Dr. Olivera to an innovation forum in Filipinas Heritage Library on July 6 to speak on his discoveries of new sources of painkillers, including deadly sea snails, among others.

Olivera was recently awarded by the Harvard Foundation as Scientist of the Year following his three decades of work in developing drugs from the animal wildlife, according to a copy of his brief profile.

Dr. Olivera has published about 158 works on Conus toxins, and is co-founder of Utah-based startup Cognetix.

A summa cum laude graduate from the University of the Philippines in 1960, he eventually took his PhD in Chemistry from the California Institute of Technology (1966), and did postdoctoral work at Stanford University from 1966-1968.

Olivera then returned briefly to the Philippines to become a research associate professor of Biochemistry at the UP College of Medicine before returning to the US to become an associate professor at the University of Utah in 1970.

He has held the title of Distinguished Professor of Biology since 1992.

His work on conotoxins was eventually picked by Forbes Asia which published it on its July 2007 issue.

Olivera and his team made a breakthrough when they discovered a family of biomolecules they collectively called conotoxins from Cone shells found in tropical waters of the Philippines, another online biography said.

“As a boy in his native Philippines, Baldomero Olivera spent countless hours scouring for seashells on the beach. Once he’d made his finds, he’d rush home and pore over marine-life books to identify his treasures. He was particularly intrigued with cone snails, beautiful but deadly sea snails that kill their prey with venom. Thirty years later Olivera’s fascination with cone snails would open a new pipeline of drugs for discovery,” the Forbes article, penned by Dennis Posadas, said.