Researchers on Thursday said they have identified the genes that enable an endangered Himalayan plant to produce a chemical vital to making a widely used chemotherapy drug, and inserted them into an easily grown laboratory plant that then produced the same chemical.
The endangered plant, called the mayapple, produces a precursor chemical to the chemotherapy drug etoposide, which is used in many patients with lung cancer, testicular cancer, brain cancer, lymphoma, leukemia and other cancers.
The researchers genetically engineered the easily grown laboratory plant Nicotiana benthamiana, a wild relative of tobacco, to make the chemical.