To get a good medicine is a need of hour for cancer patients as Surgery, radio or chemotherapy is not only costly but harm patient physically too much too. Scientists have extracted a natural anti-cancer compound from daffodils that may help improve treatments for the deadly disease. Researchers, led by Denis Lafontaine from Universite libre de Bruxelles (ULB) in Belgium, discovered that this compound triggers the activation of an anti-tumoural surveillance pathway. The compound is an alkaloid named haemanthamine and binds to the ribosome, the scientists established.
Ribosomes are nanomachines essential to the survival of our cells because they synthesize all our proteins to sustain their unrestrained growth, cancer cells rely on increased protein synthesis. They are therefore particularly sensitive to treatments that inhibit the production and the function of ribosomes. In the study…
