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| Home Front: Culture Wars |
| Dirty old mine has rich seam of drugs |
| 2006-07-19 |
| I love these stories. They drive the Greenies nuts. EVERY cloud has a silver lining. A contaminated lake designated hazardous is turning out to be a source of novel chemicals that could help fight migraines and cancer. "It's exciting to know that something toxic and dangerous might contain something of value," says Andrea Stierle, a chemist at the University of Montana in Butte. Berkeley Pit Lake, also in Butte, filled with groundwater after the copper mine closed in 1982. Dissolved metal compounds such as iron pyrites give the lake a pH of 2.5 that makes it impossible for most aquatic life to survive. In 1995 Stierle discovered novel forms of fungi and bacteria in the lake. More recently her team has found a strain of the pithomyces fungi producing a compound that binds to a receptor that causes migraines and could block headaches, while a strain of penicillium fungi makes a different compound that inhibits the growth of lung cancer cells. This week they reveal that a novel compound called berkelic acid from another new strain of penicillium fungus reduces the rate of ovarian cancer cell growth by 50 per cent (Journal of Organic Chemistry, vol 71, p 5357). Stierle is rushing to identify more of these extremophile creatures before the toxic site is cleaned up. |
| Posted by:phil_b |
| #6 Does anyone else find it ironic that a polluted lake is named Berkeley. Talk about driving the greenies nuts... |
| Posted by: Warthog 2006-07-19 11:42 |
| #5 2b, there is a long, proud history in medicinal chemistry of looking for new compounds in the strangest places. A fair number of medicinal chemists have made their careers poking around in strange plants, sponges, fungi, etc. There are numerous biomedical journals devoted completely to the topic. |
| Posted by: Steve White 2006-07-19 10:54 |
| #4 2b, you don't need a lung cancer patient to test fungi if they have an effect on lung cancer cells. All you need is a culture in a petri dish (or more of them thereof to get some statistical correlations). Cancer cells, due to their chemistry that differs from normal cells, are susceptible to certain toxins. For instance, hydrocyanic acid in dosages that are relatively safe for normal cells kills off cancer cells like there's no tomorrow. Of course, you need at least healthy liver to process the resulting waste. |
| Posted by: twobyfour 2006-07-19 10:04 |
| #3 2b, this is not my area, but I understand they have machines that profile compounds to see if they have potential in certain areas. The biotech companies use them so I assume they work. |
| Posted by: phil_b 2006-07-19 08:44 |
| #2 LOL. You may find this interesting, 2b: The explosion in bioinformatics and high-speed screening techniques is allowing companies to survey greater numbers of microorganisms for desired biocatalytic activity, she says. Advances in "directed evolution" methods for tailoring these organisms also play a role. Such techniques, de Brabander says, allow companies to survey more potential biocatalysts faster than ever before. You'll find it about halfway down in the link. Seems some of these extremophile bugs have been identified as particularly useful as biocatalysts. |
| Posted by: Gramble Phetch9861 2006-07-19 08:43 |
| #1 I guess it's just hard for me to imagine how this actually came about. Hey Andrea, look! Here is some fungus from a polluted pond. Don't you have migranes? Why don't you try this and see if it works? Why, indeed it does work! Hoakay. Now let's try this novel bacteria and see how it works on lung cancer patients. Quick, let's get someone to drink somemore of these extremophile creatures before they clean the pond. |
| Posted by: 2b 2006-07-19 08:22 |