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Journalism of Courage
As a research scientist interested in developing new drugs from natural sources, E. Edward Mena has worked with, among other things, spider venom and the lethal toxins of cone snails from the Philippines. But for the past decade or so, Mena has turned his attention exclusively to mushrooms. Mena, 57, is the president of LifePharms Inc., a fledgling company, part of the University of Connecticut8217;s Technology Incubation Program. Mena hopes that someday his vast collection of mushrooms8212; or, more accurately, his collection of mushroom extracts8212;will create a prosperous business.
The US government is helping to accelerate that dream, contributing millions of dollars of grant money for two of LifePharms8217; projects. One is the search for a new cancer drug, based on a promising compound derived from a small mushroom collected in upstate New York. The second is a five-year, 5 million NIH grant to seek new drugs that can be used to treat people infected with smallpox.
Just how can a toadstool lead to beneficial drugs? The answer lies in the mushrooms8217; constant fight for survival. In the wild, mushrooms continually fight off attacks from insects, bacteria, nematodes and other plants and fungi. They do that by waging chemical warfare, producing special substances to defend themselves. Mena describes them as miniature chemical factories. 8216;8216;What we have here is a collection of hundreds of thousands of compounds that have evolved over hundreds of millions of years to specifically affect some biological systems,8217;8217; Mena explained.
So the central premise driving Mena8217;s research is: Could some of that multitude of chemical compounds also work against biological threats to humans, such as cancer or smallpox? Fungal compounds already have led to important drugs, such as Lipitor, which is used to lower cholesterol, and Cyclosporin, which helps prevent the rejection of transplanted organs.
Mena started in a small lab that was part of a state-run business incubator and began establishing relationships with mycologists, or fungus specialists, all over the country. The trips started soon afterward, and his collection of wild-collected mushrooms started to grow. Today, Mena says he has samples of about 18,000 of the estimated 20,000 to 25,000 known mushroom species endemic to the US, all collected in the wild. He said it8217;s important that the samples are native, rather than grown in a lab, to be sure they8217;ve developed the all-important defense mechanisms. Of that number, Mena and his technicians have produced extracts from about 12,000. The process involves breaking down the mushrooms into their component chemicals, analysing them, and then putting them through various tests for 8216;8216;biological activity,8217;8217; or the ability to have an effect on another substance.
At some point Mena hopes his labours will result in a thriving, money-making business. He said he became convinced of the value of natural sources while working for 10 years in drug discovery at Pfizer Inc. After leaving Pfizer, among his projects was studying ways that cities can defend themselves against biological attack for the Sandia National Laboratories. 8216;8216;I was constantly aware that fungus had the potential for drugs,8217;8217; Mena said. Meanwhile, scientists are spending millions looking for promising chemicals in daunting places. 8216;8216;We8217;re looking in the Amazon, at the bottom of the ocean,8217;8217; Mena said, 8216;8216;and we don8217;t even know what we might have in our own back yards.8217;8217;
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