PU study: Weed derivatives potential treatment for skin cancer
05-Jan-23 05:32:55

A study conducted recently by researchers at Panjab University’s University Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences (UIPS), has revealed that the modified derivatives of lantadenes collected from the weed “lantana camara” can be a potential treatment for skin cancer

A study conducted recently by researchers at Panjab University’s University Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences (UIPS), has revealed that the modified derivatives of lantadenes collected from the weed “lantana camara” can be a potential treatment for skin cancer.

The study has been conducted by a team of researchers including Neelima Dhingra, faculty at UIPS; DST INSPIRE fellow Monika Chauhan; in collaboration with Ashwani Kaul of PU’s biophysics department and Manu Sharma of National Forensic Institute (NFI), Delhi. The study has been recently published in an international journal ‘Phytochemistry’.

The invasive weed, “lantana camara”, for the research was collected from Himachal Pradesh. This weed exists in other places as well. The researchers, however, said that this weed found in that area (from where it was collected) has not been studied for this kind of research. Its naturally occurring derivatives, ‘Lantadenes’, were isolated, synthetically modified and animal studies were performed by the team to evaluate the anti-cancer activity of the lantandene derivative.

Neelima Dhingra said that the natural products and their molecular frameworks have a long tradition as valuable starting points for medicinal chemistry and drug discovery and pentacyclic triterpenoids are emerging as important drug leads for various diseases.

“Some of the metabolites like lantadenes from lantana camara have been known to inhibit cell division and showed anti-antitumor potential. With this concept in mind, our team began to explore the lantadene scaffold with various structural modifications and in modulating the disease processes. Over the last years, they have been involved in isolation of the lantadenes from the weed lantana for anti-cancer studies,” she said.

In this study, novel analogues have been evaluated for their cytotoxicity (quality of being toxic to cells) against human melanoma (A375) and non melanoma skin cancer cell lines (A431).

According to the researchers, experimental studies carried out in the laboratory have indicated that lead analogue showed therapeutic potential against skin cancer by modulating cell proliferation and inhibitor of NF-kB.

“Encouraging outcomes have been filed for the patent. Detailed preclinical studies need to be done before their clinical investigation,” said Dhingra.

Dhingra, who is trained as a medicinal chemist, synthesises new chemical entities while working on molecular biology and pharmacology of hormone-dependent cancers (prostate and skin) by integrating different computational tools.

SOURCE & CREDIT: HINDUSTAN TIMES