A consortium of academic and industry researchers has established a biodiversity project in the Chiapas region of southern Mexico. Xenova (Slough, UK), a biotechnology company specializing in the discovery of small molecule drugs derived from naturally occurring organisms, together with the University of Georgia (UGA; Athens, GA) and El Colegio de la Frontera Sur (San Cristobal de Las Casas) will work with the local Mayan people to create biodiversity inventories of plants and fungi that the Maya people have used for years in ancient herbal medicine, according to project leader, Brent Berlin from UGA. The area is ideal for this as "the Chiapas flora is among the richest in the world," he says. The project will be funded by a five–year grant of $500,000 per year from the International Cooperative Biodiversity Groups Program of the US National Institutes of Health (Bethesda, MD), which announced its awards in December. Although any intellectual property gained from the research will be held within Mexico, "all of the data will be shared among the group, as required by our collecting permits and intellectual property agreements with Mexico and the US," says Berlin.