Deciphering the "recipe book" of bacteria that make cancer drugs, toward designing next-generation anticancer drugs

Explanation

Anticancer drugs (HDAC inhibitors) related to the lymphoma drug romidepsin are natural substances originally produced by bacteria in the soil. A research team from the University of Warwick in the UK and Monash University elucidated the mechanism by which small components called "docking domains," which connect bacterial enzymes to one another, reliably produce distinct variants of drugs with similar structures. Deciphering this "recipe book" is expected to make it easier to create synthetic pathways for new drugs designed to target specific cancers.