Gedunin, an extract of the Indian neem tree that has been used for centuries in Asia as a natural remedy to treat inflammation, fever, and malaria, may also be used to help kill cancer cells.
Cancer cells typically avoid death by hijacking molecular chaperones that guide and protect the proteins that ensure normal cellular function and then tricking them into helping mutated versions of those proteins stay alive, says Dr. Ahmed Chadli, a researcher at the GRU Cancer Center and senior author of the study.
Drug development has focused on the chaperone Hsp90 (heat shock protein 90) because it plays a key role in assisting mutated proteins, making it an attractive cancer drug target. But small molecules targeting Hsp90 have inadvertently resulted in the expression of proteins that protect cancer cells from programmed cell death, compromising the Hsp90 inhibitors in the clinic.
Chadli and his team found that gedunin attacks a co-chaperone, or helper protein, of Hsp90 called p23. Hence, gedunin leads to the inactivation of the Hsp90 machine and the killing of cancer cells without the production of anti-apoptotic proteins.
Source:
http://www.asianscientist.com/in-the-lab/gedunin-indian-plant-compound-cancer-cell-death-2013/
http://www.jbc.org/content/early/2013/01/25/jbc.M112.427328
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