Future Now
The IFTF Blog
Re-engineering perwinkle
Synthetic biology researchers at MIT have engineered the periwinkle plant to spew out new compounds that could eventually be used in pharmaceuticals. Chemistry professor Sarah O'Connor and her colleagues chose to focus on the periwinkle plant because of its natural production of the cancer drug vinblastine, albeit in minute amounts. From the MIT News Office:
"Plants are really nature's best chemists," says O'Connor...
Vinblastine, which has been used as a cancer drug since the 1960s, is very difficult to isolate from the periwinkle plant because it is produced in minute quantities (the yield is about 0.002 percent of the plant's weight). However, it would be even more difficult (and expensive) to synthesize vinblastine in the laboratory.
"It's a beautiful and elegant synthesis, but it's not cost-effective, so industry does not currently use synthesis to make vinblastine," said O'Connor.
Other researchers are now running clinical trials for artificial analogues of vinblastine, so it could be beneficial if periwinkle plants could be induced to synthesize those same compounds or new compounds that might be even more effective.