Case study Natural medicines

How can compounds from nature be harnessed to tackle diseases such as cancer?

Several projects run by Prof Chris Moody at The University of Nottingham are finding out how to create new, effective anti-cancer therapies inspired by natural products.

These include fungal compounds which disrupt cancer-causing pathways, and marine natural products that appear to help the body’s immune system reject tumours.

Highlights

The Moody laboratory has been studying compounds based on the natural product radicicol. Isolated from a fungus many years ago, this can block the enzyme heat shock protein 90 (Hsp90), an action that can disrupt multiple cancer-causing pathways simultaneously. Although much remains to be done, one Nottingham compound – NP261 – binds to the protein as desired. Inhibitors of Hsp90 may also play a beneficial role in neurodegeneration. The Moody group is investigating this in a new project funded by the Parkinson’s Disease Society.

A potentially attractive but different approach to cancer therapy is to recruit the body’s own immune system to reject solid tumours. The enzyme indoleamine 2,3-dioxygenase (IDO) has been shown to play a major role in allowing tumours to escape the host’s immune system, and evidence suggests inhibition of IDO can produce significant anti-cancer effects. Chris and his colleagues are pursuing chemical syntheses of potential anti-cancer medicines based on natural products isolated from marine sources.

Expertise

Research by Chris Moody’s group is focused on natural product synthesis, chemical synthetic methodology and medicinal chemistry. In cancer and infectious disease, over half of clinically used drugs are based on molecules that occur naturally. Importantly, the use of such molecules – natural products – is not simply historic. Of the new small molecule medicines (those excluding vaccines) introduced in the 25-year period to late 2008, over 60 per cent are derived from or inspired by natural compounds.