The wild tomatillo is a common weed in North America

Mar 27, 2012 06:56 GMT  ·  By

The common weed Physalis longifolia, which is native to North America, may seem like nothing more than a simple weed to most people, but scientists now see it as a promising lead for developing a new series of therapies against cancer.

The plant, a wild tomatillo, contains a class of compounds that appear to be very effective against tumor cells. Early pre-clinical trials conducted using these chemicals show great promise, so researchers at the University of Kansas pledged to continue investigating the issue in detail.

The KU group is made up of scientists Barbara Timmermann, Kelly Kindscher and Mark Cohen. The team says that 14 new compounds have already been identified inside these plants, all of which have anti-cancer properties.

All of these chemicals belong to a class known as withanolides, which apparently produce no type of side effects in humans, and have no discernible levels of toxicity. This means that future treatments based on these therapies could be used in combination with already-established methods.

“We’re excited by the preliminary results. While our research is still in the early stages, we’re optimistic that some of these 14 molecules could lead to new plant-based drugs or dietary supplements,” Timmermann explains.

He holds an appointment as a medicinal chemist and co-director of the KU Native Medicinal Plant Research Program. This initiative includes scientists from a number of KU departments, whose role is to examine native plants for potential uses as remedies, supplements or pharmaceutical agents.

The new withanolides are described in the November 2011 issue of the Journal of Natural Products. The team will also present its findings at the University Research & Entrepreneurship Symposium, which will be held on April 18, in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

“It’s a big deal for us to be invited to this symposium. We’re in an elite group,” Timmerman adds. Kindscher is a senior scientist at the Kansas Biological Survey, and Cohen is a surgical oncologist and translational clinician scientist at the University of Kansas Medical Center.

“For our discovery to be one of just 31 technologies to be presented in Cambridge is very exciting. It speaks well of our work and, more broadly, of the interdisciplinary research being done at KU,” Cohen explains.

The group says that the common native plant Physalis longifolia represents an important breakthrough in our search for potent compounds to address cancer. At first, the team found just one compound in the plant, but subsequent analyses revealed all the other ones as well, each of which turned out to be more effective than the one before it.