New study from scientists at the Université libre de Bruxelles has found a natural alkaloid extracted from Daffodils that could trigger the activation of an anti-tumoral surveillance pathway. The work was published recently in Cell Press' Structure.
The alkaloid that Denis Lafontaine's team extracted is called haemanthamine and it is capable of binding to ribosomes, the nanomachines that cancer relies on to synthesize proteins. Using haemanthamine, the researchers were able to block the production of protein by the ribosomes and slow the growth of cancer cells. Haemanthamine was also found to block the production of ribosomes in the nucleolus, which triggered the activation of an anti-tumoral surveillance pathway leading to the stabilization of the protein p53 and the elimination of cancer cells.
In the future, Lafontaine's team and Veronique Mathieu are planning to test the effect on ribosome biogenesis and function of four Amaryllidaceae alkaloids. They hope to identify the most promising chemical backbone that can be used for future cancer therapeutics.
Image: Ribosome. Image courtesy of Denis Lafontaine at the Université libre de Bruxelles.