New Delhi, 23 June (IANS). A team of American researchers has converted a dangerous fungus into a powerful medicine fighting cancer. This information was given in a new study released on Monday.
Researchers separated a new range of molecules from a poisonous crop fungus called Aspergillus Flaves. Subsequently, he changed these chemicals and tested them on leukemia cells.
According to a study by the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Engineering and Applied Science, researchers have discovered a compound that can kill cancer cells. This compound is equal to the drugs approved by the FDA and this can open new avenues for future fungus and discovery of drugs.
Sheri Gao, a professor of chemical and biomolicular engineering at the University of Pennsylvania and a new research paper published in the journal Nature Chemical Biology, said Sheri Gao said that Fungus gave us penicillin. These results show that many more medicines from nature are yet to be discovered.
This therapy is of a type of peptides, which are made ribosomally and later modified. These are called Rips, whose pronunciation is like ‘Rip’.
The name of this compound comes from its origin. Ribosomes, a small cellular structure that forms proteins and is later modified to increase its cancer-destructive properties.
Kiyui Ni, the postdorter Fellow in CBE and the first writer of this paper, says that it is difficult to cleanse these chemicals.
While thousands of reps have been identified in bacteria, their number in Fangi (fungi) is very less. One reason for this is that earlier researchers mistakenly deemed the reposes of Fangi as non-ra-rabosomal peptides and could not understand how the fangs make these molecules.
Ni said that it is complex to make these compounds. But this complexity gives them such a special biological activity.
Researchers first scanned a dozen species of Aspergillus, which suggested that it could have more chemicals.
Researchers compared the chemicals made by these strands to the known construction segments of the RIPP and found that A flavus was a promising expectation for further studies.
Genetic analysis showed that a special protein in a fungus called A Flaves is the source of fungal reps. When the researchers closed the gene that made that protein, the chemical signs showing the presence of Rips also disappeared.
This new method was successful in finding the source of fungal reps not only in A flavus by mixing metabolism and genetic information, but can also be used to find more fungal reps in the future.
The special thing is that these compounds had little or no effect on the breast, liver or lung cancer cells or on various bacteria and fungi. This suggests that the harmful effects of asperizimicin have only on certain types of cells, which is a significant feature for a future drug.
The next step is to tested asperizimicin in animal models, with the expectation that it can also be tested a human clinical testing one day.
-IANS
PSK
