There is a magic weapon hidden in the desert, which may solve chemotherapy resistance

▎Editor of WuXi AppTec's content team There are a special kind of plants in the dry deserts of Australia.
The smaller ones resemble low shrubs, and the largest ones are just small trees
.

These plants are also called Eremophilas (Eremophilas) because of their sandy living environment, and some people will call them more directly as desert trees
.

This small plant that survives in extreme environments has not only become an easy-to-care horticultural plant due to its high drought resistance, it may even help us solve the number one problem in anti-cancer: the resistance of anti-cancer drugs
.

▲Eremophila subfloccosa (picture source: wikipedia, CC BY 2.
5, Author: Gnangarra), a plant under the genus Xishamu, most of the deaths of cancer patients are related to drug resistance, "cancer cells sometimes evolve to resist chemotherapy drugs Dr.
Malene J.
Petersen from the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, said, “One of the ways is to generate a lot of efflux pumps to expel the drug out of the cell.
” Once the patient no longer responds to the drug, the cancer may recur
.

At present, inhibiting the function of cancer cell drug efflux pump has become an important research direction to reduce drug resistance
.

However, the existing efflux pump inhibitors are usually not specific and have certain side effects
.

Professor Dan Stark of the University of Copenhagen tends to find new inspirations in traditional medicinal plants.
In the process, he discovered that plants of the genus Himalaya have always been medicinal plants used by local indigenous people to treat diseases
.

Photo source: 123RF He showed great interest in this.
Professor Stark contacted a botanist in Australia, who drove through the dry desert of Western Australia to collect various species of Xisha wood for him , And forwarded it to researchers at the University of Melbourne for analysis
.

According to a study published in Biomolecules by Professor Stark and colleagues, they isolated a substance called flavonoids from these plants, which has the effect of inhibiting the efflux pump function
.

They tested it in combination with SN-38, an active anti-cancer ingredient
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SN-38 is the active ingredient of irinotecan, a drug used to treat lung and colon cancer
.

When cancer cells develop resistance to this drug, many efflux pumps will be produced on their surface to expel the drug out of the cell.
However, the addition of flavonoids extracted from Xishamu can greatly prevent this phenomenon from happening
.

Cancer cells that could have been strong under the drug began to gradually apoptotic.
After they lost their efflux pump, the drug could accumulate inside the cell to play a role
.

In addition to cancer cells, many drug-resistant bacteria also have a large number of efflux pumps on the surface, which can help them escape the pursuit of antibiotics
.

The flavonoids discovered in the new study can also act on this type of efflux pump, suggesting that researchers may also be able to use this natural ingredient to fight drug-resistant bacteria
.

Professor Stark said that he was not shocked by this result.
At present, 70% of the anti-cancer drug ingredients on the market are inspired by substances found in nature
.

"The knowledge of traditional medicine has been passed on from generation to generation, and by combining modern technology, we can find specific active ingredients from traditional medicinal plants to produce future drugs," said Professor Stark
.

Reference: [1] Ancient natural medicine could improve cancer treatment.
Retrieved Nov 23th from https://medicalxpress.
com/news/2021-11-ancient-natural-medicine-cancer-treatment.
html[2] Malene J.
Petersen et al, Reversal of ABCG2/BCRP-Mediated Multidrug Resistance by 5,3′,5′-Trihydroxy-3,6,7,4′-Tetramethoxyflavone Isolated from the Australian Desert Plant Eremophila galeata Chinnock, Biomolecules (2021).
DOI: 10.
3390/biom11101534