Biopharming: The flowers that cure cancer - Sarah O'Connor 💉💮

Plants are arguably the world’s best chemists. All plants synthesise thousands of complicated molecules that they use to protect themselves from predators, attract pollinators and communicate with other plants. Thousands of years ago, humans realised that many of these plants also have a powerful impact on human health and well-being. Many molecules that have been isolated from plants are used to treat a variety of diseases in modern medicine. Unfortunately, these molecules are often produced by the plant in very small quantities. Additionally, some plants that produce medicines are endangered, or cannot be easily cultivated. If we understand how the plants synthesise these molecules, we may be able to genetically engineer more effective ways of producing these life-saving chemicals.

0:00 Introduction
0:11 The problem with plant-derived medicines
1:20 How does vinblastine stop cancer?
2:56 Why is vinblastine so expensive?
3:28 How do we extract medicines from plants?
4:39 Using genetic engineering to improve plant-based drugs

Speaker profile: Professor Sarah O'Connor is a Biological Chemist at the John Innes Centre. Her research focuses on understanding how plants make the complicated molecules that enable them to interact with the environment. In particular, she's interested in identifying and understanding the enzymes that construct these complex molecules from simple building blocks.

"After taking many chemistry courses in high school, and doing well in them, I decided to concentrate in Chemistry in university. This decision was probably also influenced by the fact that my father also taught high school chemistry. Early on as an undergraduate, I did research in a physical chemistry laboratory, only to realise that I had no aptitude for building and working with complicated instrumentation. I switched to a biological/organic chemistry laboratory where I worked on synthesising a compound involved in parasitic plant signalling, and loved it. This experience led me to consider a PhD in chemistry, where I focussed on biological chemistry. I chose a post doc where I did more work on enzyme mechanisms and this is where I became interested in how nature constructs complicated molecules."

Filmed at the Gatsby Plant Science Summer School, 2015.
#biopharma #biopharmaceutics #cancercure

[nonnywinner]

There is a plant for every cancer and disease. Take time with determination and objectives to be suo😊