Researchers synthesize molecule to aid in the fight against cancer
>>Print ViewPublication Date: 04/20/2007
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Toxic chemicals are pumped into thousands of cancer patients every day in the hope that chemotherapy will save their lives.
They become ill from the treatment: losing their hair, vomiting and growing weak.
But a newly synthesized molecule by Purdue researchers could change all of that.
A synthesized molecule created by P.V. Ramachandran, Amit Srivastava and Debasis Hazra could be the future of fighting cancer. Dictyostation, which comes from a marine sponge found in the Caribbean, helps inhibit cancer cell growth and can kill cancer cells. Their work has been published in the journal Organic Letters.
Ramachandran, an associate professor of chemistry, along with graduate student Srivastava completed a total synthesis of the molecule in the Herbert C. Brown Center for Borane Research using chemistry developed at Purdue by Ramachandran and the late Nobel laureate Herbert Brown.
"It's a beautiful molecule," Ramachandran said. "We compared it to the natural molecule at each step using our own home grown chemistry at Purdue."
The natural molecule is found in a type of deep sea sponge which is found 50 meters below the surface so the only practical way to use the molecule was by synthesizing it.
Ramachandran said the synthesized molecule has been varied with different analogs prior to clinical trials to see which will work best. This is important to the molecule's clinical success because different analogs will react differently in the body, he said.
One of the current chemicals used in chemotherapy treatment is Taxol.
"What we have found is that Taxol is not the ultimate medicine here," said Ramachandran.
Taxol has low solubility in water, some drug resistance and toxicity which can make patients ill. Dictyostatin could be less toxic to the body. However, clinical trials are not complete and the future of the molecule is undetermined.
And getting this far wasn't easy.
"There are 31,000 possible molecules you can synthesize based on the combinations," Ramachandran said. "But nature only makes one and that's the one we needed and the one we got."
Srivastava, who developed the procedure with Ramachandran's assistance, was stuck on one step for three months.
"It was so far, so good then I said, �I'm stuck,'" Srivastava said.
He eventually found the right procedure with 26 steps and can now synthesize Dictyostation successfully with a 4 percent product yield.
The synthetic molecule is still preclinical so it is still uncertain if it will replace Taxol and be the next step in fighting cancer. But Ramachandran hopes it will be successful.
"We were fortunate enough to get what we want," Ramachandran said. "If one analog doesn't work we can try another. It is scalable, adaptable and we can make many different combinations."