Can the bark also fight cancer?It is some trees ...

Article / Tan Bin (Southern University of Science and Technology)

Cancer is the second largest disease that threatens human health. Conquering cancer has always been the dream of scientists. Nowadays, many anticancer drugs are directly or indirectly derived from natural products. Pucinol is a very good natural anticancer drug that has been discovered at present, which has been widely used in the treatment of breast cancer, ovarian cancer and partial neck cancer and lung cancer in clinical practice. As an excellent plant anti -cancer drug in the world, this trace monomer that is separated from the gurge bark has become the world's attention and research priorities that have attracted worldwide attention in the medical field.

Growing up for nearly a thousand years

Little bark, big treasure

Plants, also known as red beans, are plants of red bean family red beans. They are constant green shrubs or trees. They have more than 2.5 million years of history on the earth. Due to the high requirements of the biological characteristics of patoly, the growth conditions of wild palags are almost harsh, and the growth area is narrow. The climate requirements are strict, resulting in only a dozen species in the world. Under natural conditions, the growth rate of palages is slow and the regeneration ability is poor. Generally, the tree needs to grow for nearly a century. Therefore, there is no large -scale natural palag forest in the world.

Vani (left) and Wall (right)

Pucinol is a natural organic compound found in a complex structure found in plant pale. As early as 1965, the chemists of the US Triangle Research Park, Vol and Vani, found in the rough extract of the Pacific Birout that these extracts, including leukemia cells, liver cancer cells, melanoma, and melanoma, these extracts Cells have a strong inhibitory effect, that is, it can lose activity of cancer cells that can be cultivated with ionization or reduce their activity.

17 carbon four -ring skeleton in paclitaxel (source: Wikipedia)

Glitol balls model structure diagram (picture source: Wikipedia)

In the same year, Wall and Vani poured a small amount of active ingredients from the low -leaf palag dry bark, but did not analyze the specific structure of this active substance. I only know that this substance contains a hydroxyl (the group contained in alcohol), Because it was obtained from the Pacific Pacific, it officially named this substance as the paclitaxel. By 1971, they used X -ray diffraction and nuclear magnetic resonance analysis to determine that paclitaxel was a ring -shaped compound composed of 47 carbon atoms. There were 11 stereo centers and a 17 -carbon four -ring skeleton structure. It is called a "monster" that can only be bred in nature.

China lists purple shirts as rare and endangered protected plants

The average content of paclitaxel in the bark is about 1.5/10000. Because the market supply of early paclitaxel was separated from the extraction from the bark, a large number of logging had seriously threatened the survival of patty species. At present, palag has become a recognized natural rare plant in the world, and China has also listed it as a rare and endangered protected plant.

How does paclitaxel resistance?

As we all know, during the division of normal cells, the cells are divided into two. After the chromosomes are replicated, the spindle shots pull it from the original position to both sides. The chromosomes can only be divided by motion to the bipolar movement only under the traction of the spindle body and the spindle wire. Therefore, microtubules are very important in cell division.

In 1979, Pharmacist Holvitz discovered that paclitaxel could be combined with microtubuin protein to promote microtubin aggregation to form microtubquins, thereby suppressing the normal physiological gathering of microtubes, causing it to form a spindle body and spindle shit, so that the cells enabled the cells It cannot be split normally, which prevents the rapid reproduction of cancer cells, and then induces cancer cell apoptosis. Therefore, in anticancer drugs, paclites are considered as microtubules in the wire division.

The path of paclitaxel synthesis

Because natural paclitaxel is extracted from the rare Pacific paciflower, and the growth cycle of natural packets is long, about 13.6 kg of bark can extract 1 gram of paclitaxel. The long -term packets of more than a century, so long -term supply and high prices have made the artificial synthesis technology of paclitaxel rapidly developing.

At present, the main method of artificial synthesis of paclitaxel is the biological engineering method, which is semi -synthesis of paclitaxel.

The biological engineering method is to use biological engineering methods to produce paclitaxel on a large scale, first cultivate and screen the strains that can produce a large number of paclitaxel. By continuously cultivating them, multiple mutagenization and optimization of their genetic structures will be achieved. The ground "produces paclitaxel without being restricted by rare raw materials. The latest scientific research results show that high -yield strains that can produce 448.52 microphone in each liter of culture solution have greatly improved synthetic efficiency.

In China, paclitaxel is a chemical preparation with the largest sales ranking for a long time. It is a variety with a very large amount of medication in the field of anti -tumor drugs. We believe that today, with the continuous progress of pharmaceutical technology, discovering natural products with medicinal value from rich natural resources will be of great benefit to the human health industry.

Knowledge link

What is microtubucta?

The circular cross section of the microtuba is a hollow pipe structure composed of 13 original fibers (source: source: Wikipedia)

Microtuba is a component of the cell skeleton, spreading all over the cytoplasm. Positioning and aggregating dynamic characteristics, play an important role in maintaining cell morphology, cell division, signal transformation, and material transportation.

Micro tube maintains the structure of the cells, and forms a cell skeleton together with microfil and middle fibers.They also form the internal structure of cilia and whip hair, which provides a movement for intracellular transportation platforms and participating in multiple cells, including motion of secretion of balba, cellulator and cells in cells.In addition, they also have the functions of participating in cell division (with wire division and decreasing division), including forming a spindle body, and pulling the real nuclear chromosomes.This article comes from the magazine of "Knowledge is Power". The original title "" Anti -Cancer Star "in the Bark of Red Sanda", the author Tan Bin, has deleted modification, please indicate the source of the original work.

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