2021 PAINT THE PAPER PINK

Page 52 2021 PAINT THE PAPER PINK LINCOLN DAILY NEWS Oct./Nov. 2021 dai-m Mingji Dai, professor of organic chemistry at Purdue University. (Purdue University photo/ Charles Jischke) Download image “Our compound can not only kill these cancer cells, it can stop their migration,” Dai said. “If we can keep the cancer from metastasizing, the patient can live longer.” Stopping cancer from spreading throughout the body — metastasizing — is key to preserving a cancer patient’s life. Once cancer starts to migrate from its original organ into different body systems, new symptoms start to develop, often threatening the patient’s life. “For killing cancer cells and stopping migration, there are other compounds that do that,” Dai said. “But as far as inhibiting the BRAT1 protein, there are no other compounds that can do that.” Dai and his team believe that as effective as curcusone D is by itself, it may be even more potent as part of a combination therapy. They tested it alongside a DNA damaging agent that has already been approved by the Food and Drug Administration and found that this combination therapy is much more effective. One difficulty in studying curcusones as potential cancer treatments is that, while the shrub they come from is common and inexpensive, it takes massive amounts of the shrub to yield even a small amount of the compounds. Even then, it is difficult to separate the compounds they were interested in from the rest of the chemicals in the shrub’s roots. “In nature, the plant doesn’t produce a lot of this compound,” Dai said. “You would need maybe as much as 100 pounds of the plant’s dry roots to get just about a quarter teaspoon of the substance — a 0.002% yield.” That small yield is relevant for production, because if it is effective as a cancer treatment, pharmacists will need a lot more of it. Additionally, having an abundant supply of the compounds makes studying them easier, quicker and less expensive. “That’s why a new synthesis is so important,” Dai said. “We can use the synthesis to produce more compounds in a purer form for biological study, allowing us to advance the field. From there, we can make analogs of the compound to improve its potency and decrease the potential for side effects.” Continued n