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Brock team could be growing cancer cure

By Grant LaFleche, The Standard

Ph. D candidate Ellen Robb works in a lab at the Cairns Family Health and Bioscience Research Complex at Brock University.


The path that science takes is often unpredictable. Today's research can yield unexpected results tomorrow, which is why scientists often don't like to comment beyond the results of their own data.

Yet there is no denying the potential of newly funded research at Brock University, or the idea that a treatment for something as serious as cancer could be growing in a plant housed in the campus greenhouse.

A six-member research team led by biologist Vincenzo De Luca is working with genetically engineered plants designed to grow specific molecules. Those molecules are then tested as part of a process to determine if they have medical or commercial value.

"Chemists can synthesize these molecules in the lab, which often produces toxic byproducts," said research team member and associate professor of biology Jeff Stuart.

"By using the plants, you can do it faster, safer and essentially skip the first three or four steps that the chemist would use."

The team recently received close to $1 million in funding from the Canada Foundation for Innovation -- an arm's length, non-profit federal agency that funds scientific research -- to pursue their research.

Stuart said the money will principally be used to buy state of the art equipment for the labs at Brock's new bioscience building. The equipment will not only improve the team's work, he said, but could draw more researchers and talented students to the university.

Stuart said De Luca's work is focused on "green chemistry" -- the engineering of plants to produce molecules they do not naturally make. It's a process he said can keep some cash crop farms in business.

"Take tobacco," he said. "There are tobacco farms where the plants that are being repurposed to make these molecules. because people aren't smoking anymore."

Once the plants have grown the molecules, Stuart and his students then test them on samples of human tissue, cancer cells and other materials to observe the reactions. Eventually, if the results are promising those compounds can be tested on mice and, maybe, move on to human trials.


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