Has the answer to our ailments always been in our backyards? While plants have been used as medicines in many Indigenous and ethnic communities for thousands of years, Aussie scientists are searching for a way to use plants to cure cancers, infectious diseases, diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

Professor Marilyn Anderson from the Biochemistry Department at La Trobe University says the aim is to hopefully formulate more effective and cheaper medicines, and make them more widely available to developing countries.