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In 1989, the former professor Tanaka accepted Mr. Kamel from Assiut Unioversity as a foreign visiting scientist. Next year Yamasaki followed the supervision since Prof. Tanaka retired. He studied Egyptian medicinal plant, Salvadora persica (Salvadoraceae) and found several new lignans and elucidated their structures. After he return, he got PhD in his country. He then introduced his junior scientist, Mr. Khaled Mohamed, who visited our lab from 1993 to 1996 and studied on Egyptian plant, Chrozophora obliqua (Euphorbiaceae) to isolate unusual Dolabellane Diterpene Glucosides. He got PhD here in Japan. Then, Dr. Kamel visited again as Postdoctoral fellow supported by JSPS, and stayed for 2 years. He studied not only for himself, but also contributed a lot for education of many Japanese and foreign students.
After his return, the third Egyptian natural product chemist, Mr. Yaser visited on March 2000 through Egyptian Chamnnel system, and has been working on Egyptian Bignoniaceae plants. When he came to Japan, he accompanied his wife just married, and now he has daughter made in Japan(?).
Through this channel system, Yamasaki visited Egypt in November 1999 for leading Yaser in advance. We discussed his professor about the selection of his target plants and strategy. After the curtsy call to the President of Assiut University, two previous students showed me around the University.
Although we had few chance to see wild plant in this trip, we saw many dates, several herbs, edible (medicinal) Hibiscus and famous dye, henna (all photos were taken at Aswan). And in Cairo museum, we saw many useful seeds of terribly old ages.
