Vincenzo De Luca and graduate student Jonathan Roepke are part of a research team studying the Madagascar periwinkle.

A Brock researcher has published a new study this week that will assist in the future manufacturing of chemotherapy drugs.

In a new article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vincenzo De Luca and his team examine how plants manufacture cancer-fighting compounds. The results of their study on plant chemistry and ecology will help pave the way for simpler extraction of cancer-fighting compounds from plants such as the Madagascar periwinkle.

The Madagascar periwinkle produces two chemical components called alkaloids that, when combined, make up a powerful chemotherapy drug that stops cancer cells from growing. De Luca’s team wanted to know why these two alkaloids were not coming together inside the plant before extraction – which, along with purification, can be a costly process – so they began to study the origins of these compounds.

What they found in this popular, pretty ground cover was that one type of alkaloid made its way to the leaf surface after production, while another made its way into the interior cells of the plant. Further research showed that the two chemicals combined are toxic to insects, which could explain why they don’t come together in the plant.

This type of discovery “does not come along every day,” De Luca said. “I’ve been doing Periwinkle research since 1984 and it happens maybe four or five times within a career.”

It is a remarkable discovery, De Luca said, since it will likely have scientists in developed and developing countries taking a renewed interest in the plants. More importantly, scientists will be interested in their surface chemistry and on the important role played by the external epidermal cell layer in biosynthesis.

“This shows us that simple methodologies can still provide valuable insights,” he said, referring to the method of dipping the leaves in chloroform to determine the placement of the alkaloids. “This study should facilitate the purification of biologically useful molecules as well as providing fundamental knowledge about the biochemical and ecological roles of epidermal cell layers in the manufacturing of such complex molecules.”

The paper, headlined by PNAS as “Compartmentalization of cancer drug components in the periwinkle plant,” was co-authored by several Brock researchers and technicians under De Luca’s supervision, including Jonathan Roepke, Vonny Salim, Maggie Wu and Antje Thamm, as well as Wilhelm Boland, a director with the Max-Plank Institute for Chemical Ecology in Jena, Germany, together with his assistant Kerstin Ploss, and Jun Murata, from the Suntory Institute for Bioorganic Research in Osaka, Japan.

The paper appeared in the Aug. 9 early edition of PNAS at pnas.org/content/early/recent, and two days later in the print edition.