Researchers Harnessing 'Nature's Pharmacy' to Tackle Cancer

Many cancer drugs, antibiotics originate from a chemical compound in a natural product

- Joyce Teo

Local researchers are investigating tropical plants commonly consumed by cancer patients for their purported anti-cancer properties to see if they can be used in the management or treatment of certain cancers.

They are starting with the bandicoot berry, Sabah snake grass and moringa, which they have already sequenced, along with 97 other plant species from the region.

These plants are all found in the genomic garden at the Singapore General Hospital (SGH), which was set up by the SingHealth Duke-NUS Institute of Biodiversity Medicine (BD-Med) for genomic research and conservation purposes.

The three plants are being screened against approximately 10 different cancer cell lines, including breast, colorectal, lung, liver and kidney cancers, to validate the response. A cancer cell line is a culture of cancer cells that are grown indefinitely in a laboratory setting, serving as a model for scientists to study cancer biology and test potential treatments.

The researchers from BD-Med want to look at the mechanism by which the plants exert the observed anti-cancer effects.

Knowing how that works will allow them to translate research findings into effective therapies, its director Teh Bin Tean told The Straits Times during a recent tour of the garden.

"Each of these plants contains hundreds of plant chemicals, but no one has identified the specific chemical that has the anti-cancer effect. Once we identify this chemical X, we can test it on animals and then humans," he said.

This is, however, a long and complex process. The research is still in its early stages, and it may take five to six years before any findings can progress to clinical trials and be translated to the bedside, he said.

In 2024, BD-Med started to explore the use of artificial intelligence to facilitate the process of finding chemical X in the plants to see if it could help to quicken it.