Successful synthesis of a fungal metabolite known to disrupt cancer cells could lead to a wide range of new drugs to fight the disease, claims a team of organic chemists at the Universitá di Modenae Reggio Emilia in Italy.

Paolo Davoli and colleagues report that they have found a way of making microcarpalide, a metabolite from a fungus found in tropical tree bark.

The metabolite disrupts the actin microfilaments of a cell's structure, which are also the target of some cancer treatments.

Tweaking the synthesis could yield a chemical library of possible structural analogues for anti-cancer therapy, they say.

Steven Evans