THE "death carrot" might appear to be a simple Mediterranean weed, but it has inspired what could be a potent cancer drug.
Thapsia garganica is highly toxic to sheep, hence its name, and now it seems cancer cells dislike it too. Samuel Denmeade at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, and colleagues have spent 15 years engineering an analogue of thapsigargin, the plant's active ingredient, which works by shutting down essential calcium pumps inside cells.
However, the engineered thapsigargin cannot enter cells until it encounters an enzyme found on the surface of many prostate cancer cells. This means it is toxic only to these cancer cells and to other cells that aid prostate tumour growth. The drug is now in phase I clinical trials for prostate cancer (Science Translational Medicine, DOI: 10.1126/scitranslmed.3003886).
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