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Gambogic amide (gambogic acid amide), C38H45NO7
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Results of the study are published online in the Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences and will be published in a future print
edition.
The research was conducted by Emory University scientists Keqiang Ye,
PhD, associate professor of pathology and laboratory medicine; first
author Sung-Wuk Jang, PhD, and Masashi Okada, PhD, post-doctoral
fellows in Dr. Ye�s lab; Iqbal Sayeed, PhD, instructor; Donald Stein,
PhD, Asa G. Candler Professor of Medicine; and Peng Jin, PhD,
assistant professor of human genetics; and Dr. Ge Xiao at the Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention.
Gambogic amide is derived from gambogic acid, a major ingredient of
gamboges, a brownish-orange resin exuded from the Southeast Asian
Garcinia hanburryi tree. The resin has been used in that area of the
world for thousands of years to treat cancers without any reported
toxicity to noncancerous cells.
"Humans actually have a naturally occurring molecule in the body,
Nerve Growth Factor (NGF), which stimulates the growth and
differentiation of certain types of nerve cells. However, NGF has poor
pharmocokinetics and bioavailability when synthetically manufactured
and used therapeutically, and it is also expensive to produce," Dr. Ye
says.
"Previous research had focused on copying the chemical structure of
NGF, but the cyclopeptide mimetics are not potent enough to use as a
therapeutic agent. Instead, we decided that we needed to identify a
more robust molecule that would pharmacologically mimic NGF's effect
on brain cells by binding to TrkA. What we came up with was gambogic
amide." Dr. Ye says.
The researchers are now conducting further pre-clinical research to
investigate how the body processes gambogic amide and to confirm that
it is in fact non-toxic.
This study was supported by the National Institutes of Health.
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