Cancer drug came from traditional Chinese medicine

 50 Years Ago History of Science,Cancer,Biomedicine Cancer drug came from traditional Chinese medicine

Excerpt from the August 20, 1966 issue of Science News

By Cassie Martin 11:00am, August 11, 2016

HAPPY TREE Doctors use synthetic versions of a compound derived from a rare tree — Camptotheca acuminata, used for centuries in traditional Chinese medicine — to treat cancer.

潘立傑 LiChieh Pan/flickr (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

Magazine issue: Vol. 190, No. 4, August 20, 2016, p. 4

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Rare Chinese tree may help fight leukemia —Leukemia victims may one day be helped by a substance drawn from an obscure Chinese tree. Tests on laboratory animals with a type of experimental leukemia … have shown that the extract, known as camptothecin, has high antitumor properties. However, no tests on humans have yet taken place. Chemists are trying now to synthesize the substance, whose only known natural source is the rare Camptotheca acuminata tree. — Science News, August 20, 1966

UPDATE

Although it didn’t prove effective against leukemia, a synthetic version of camptothecin is used to treat ovarian, lung and colon cancers. Clinical trials in humans began in the late 1960s, but early efforts to make the compound water soluble came with toxicity. Patient studies resumed in the 1980s, once researchers made safer water-soluble versions that could still kill tumors. Two synthetic forms, marketed as Camptosar and Hycamtin, are used in chemotherapy treatments today.

Citations

Rare Chinese tree may help fight leukemia. Science News. Vol. 90, August 20, 1966, p. 115.

Further Reading

L. Beil. ‘Cancer moonshot’ launch prep under way. Science News. Vol. 189, April 2, 2016, p. 20.

T.H. Saey and L. Sanders. Nobel medicine prize won for drugs from natural sources. Science News Online, October 5, 2015.

J. Raloff. Traditional Chinese medicine: Big questions. Science News Online, June 8, 2011.

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Cancer drug came from traditional Chinese medicine