Beautiful, in 2010
A few months ago Newsweek
tricked me into paying for an on-line subscription, so from time to time I
check to see if any useful anti-cancer articles have been published. Usually, no – but this is one:
It seems that there is a rare, endangered, and hard-to-come-by plant scratching for existence in the high Himalaya (the Himalayan mayapple, Sinopodophyllum hexandrum)
from which a very important drug is made.
This plant produces a toxin when its leaves are wounded, from which a
substance called podophyllotoxin results. Podophyllotoxin, in turn, is necessary for manufacture of the anti-cancer drug etoposide. Etoposide is classified as an essential
medicine by the World Health Organization.
Well, some very clever people at Stanford have figured out just what
proteins make up podophyllotoxin, which enzymes are responsible for producing
them and, presumably, which genes produce those enzymes. These, then, they have transplanted into a
close relative of the tobacco plant and – voila! – Cheap podophyllotoxin (and
fewer dead climbers harvesting mayapple.)
The hope is that it will be possible eventually to produce the stuff
using common yeast. Thus, science in
service to humanity. It undoubtedly cost
a bundle to do this research, but the eventual savings will be enormous.
Further reading in Newsweek
has convinced me that the silly season in science is truly upon us. I will publish some examples in Facebook.
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