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Anti-cancer fungal compound produced in lab

Drug Discovery - For the first time, chemists have synthesized a complex compound - first discovered in ocean-living fungus - that has shown the ability to kill cancer cells.

Ten years ago scientists isolated from an ocean-living fungus a compound that has since shown the ability to kill cancer cells in the lab. The compound - known as (+)-11,11'-Dideoxyverticillin A - is one of the most structurally complex members of a family of naturally occurring alkaloids.

"If you want to only rely on the natural substance, you often have to go back to the natural source and extract more material for further study. This is certainly OK if getting to the natural source is easy and if the extraction yield is acceptable," said Mohammad Movassaghi, associate professor of chemistry at MIT. "However, with a chemical synthesis you can rely on commercially available starting material, scale up the synthesis as needed, and make designed derivatives of the compound of interest."

Now that the chemical synthesis has been demonstrated, researchers can modify it to produce similar compounds that may also have potential pharmacological activity. The natural function of the compound is not known, but it is likely to be involved in either natural defense or signalling mechanisms - "chemical warfare at the microbial level," as Movassaghi describes it. It is thought a colony of fungus might secrete the substances, toxic to competing species, to prevent invaders from stealing the same food and other resources.

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