Cancer cures and blueprints from nature
Reflections on the drug discovery path from plant to pharmaceutical.
Yesterday, I gave a lecture to my undergraduate Botanical Medicine and Health course on some important cancer therapies derived from molecules first identified in plants. Nature is the best chemist, but it does have its limitations—sufficient yields of the active molecule or high toxicity, for starters. As I walked through one example after another of how different cancer drugs were derivatized—created through modification of the original blueprint discovered in nature—I thought perhaps you all might like to learn about this as well! So, here we go. Today I’ll share the story of the Chinese Happy Tree and a starting compound that was too toxic for human use.
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