Cornelia de Moor of University of Nottingham and her team have examined a drug called cordycepin, extracted from a rare kind of wild mushroom called cordyceps and is now prepared from a cultivated form.

'Our discovery will open up the possibility of investigating the range of different cancers that could be treated with cordycepin,' said de Moor.

'We have also developed a very effective method that can be used to test new, more efficient or more stable versions of the drug in the Petri dish,' added de Moor.

Cordyceps is a strange parasitic mushroom that grows on caterpillars. Properties attributed to cordyceps mushroom in Chinese medicine made it interesting to investigate.

The problem was that although cordycepin was a promising drug, it was quickly degraded in the body. It can now be given with another drug to help combat this, but the side effects of the second drug are a limit to its potential use.

'Because of technical obstacles and people moving on to other subjects, it's taken a long time to figure out exactly how cordycepin works on cells,' said de Moor, according to a Nottingham release.

'With this knowledge, it will be possible to predict what types of cancers might be sensitive and what other cancer drugs it may effectively combine with. It could also lay the groundwork for the design of new cancer drugs that work on the same principle.'

These finidings will be published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry.

Source: IANS