The sticky leaves of a native Australian shrub, used by the nation's First Peoples as medicine, have been found to contain compounds that could possibly assist with cancer treatment.
The oil from the species Eremophila galeata seems to stop cancer cells from pushing medicine out. The extract takes away the defense that some cancer cells use to spit out their treatments.
For thousands of years, the Australian family of flowering plants, whose name means 'desert loving', has been used by aboriginal people in smoking ceremonies to boost health or as a poultice for skin conditions.
We have the tools to study these plants on a biochemical level in order to learn more about their curative secrets. Drug resistance in tumors is a major obstacle for cancer treatments such as chemotherapy, and so, researchers are being forced to search more broadly for new medical avenues.
Dan Strk from the University of Copenhagen says that there are already products that inhibit the efflux pump.
They do not work well because they are not specific enough and have a lot of side effects.
E. galeata has a long history of use in medicine, and it also has a lot of flavonoids.
A type of plant compound called floroids has been shown to be effective in blocking the production of a certain type of cell signaling. These compounds are non-toxic, have high chemical diversity, and hold promising bioactivity, which makes them valuable for clinical use.
Other Eremophila species have been found to contain compounds that block efflux pump activity. Some of the plants have anti-diabetic, anti-viral, and anti-bacterial properties.
Research on this family as a whole has been limited.
Researchers found that the effect of the drug on colon cancer cells was increased by the use of E. galeata. A dye accumulation test shows that the resin's flavonoids blocked the efflux pumps in the cancer cells.
"Antibiotic-resistantbacteria, for example, appear to produce large amounts of almost identical efflux pumps, which has made them extremely good at pumping the antibiotics out of the cells," says Malene Petersen from the University of Copenhagen.
The natural substance, the flavonoid, targets this specific pump protein, which makes us wonder if it may play a role in treatment of antibiotic resistance too.
There are ethical considerations when using indigenous knowledge to find promising medicines.
In the future, drug research will require further exploration of human knowledge, much of which has been ignored by western drug research. There is no guarantee that the traditional growers of these plants will be paid fairly.
If anyone uses the information provided to make a commercial product, the authors of the current study want to consider benefit sharing with the aboriginal communities or groups in the areas where these species grow.
There's no guarantee of that happening without firm policies.
As indigenous languages fade out of use, we stand to lose crucial information that might point drug researchers in the right direction.
Collaboration is needed, but the route forward is not clear.
The study was published in a book.
