Toxic weed could hold secret to cancer cure

A cancer-drug manufacturer is scouring the valleys and meadows of Utah looking for a plant that local ranchers and researchers have long considered to be a smelly, toxic weed.

Known as "skunk cabbage" to most locals, the corn lily with the scientific name Veratrum californicum produces a unique chemical not found in other plants that is being sought by Infinity Pharmaceuticals, a Massachusetts-based drug company.

Company officials are now in the process of mapping areas of Utah, Idaho and Oregon where the plant grows, and have entered into agreements with the U.S. Forest Service and a small group of private landowners to harvest the plant, according to Joe McPherson, vice president of facilities operations for Infinity.

The plant provides a key ingredient in a new cancer-treatment drug, which can be administered orally and is now being used in phase I clinical trials in patients with no other hope of recovery, said Margaret Read, product development leader for the company.

Research in the past 50 years has shown the plant "caused significant losses from birth defects to the sheep industry in central Idaho in the 1950s. Occasional reports of Veratrum-induced malformations and toxicity in animals continue," according to a study published by researchers at Utah State University in 2002.

Researchers said the plant can produce birth defects in animals when a chemical in the plant prevents normal cellular movement during early embryo development.

Read said the plant contains a "natural inhibitor that nature provides, and we're turning it into a drug." Chemists have used the chemical to create the experimental drug, known as IPI-926.

"We had to conduct a very robust set of toxicology studies before the FDA approved moving forward with it," for use in clinical trials, she said.

Work on the drug began in 2003 or 2004. At that time, only small quantities of the chemical provided by the plant were available. That's when McPherson and his team began working with the Forest Service to harvest the plants.

"We dry them down and extract the material we need for the drug," she said, adding that after the plant is harvested, the area is then reseeded with native foliage.

The drug is administered orally as a capsule and given once daily, she said. It is being used in volunteer patients with solid tumors who are resistant to all available cancer treatments, "for whom there is no other hope."

Phase 1 trials are now underway at Johns Hopkins University; TGen in Scottsdale, Ariz., and the University of Colorado, with the study expected to enroll 30 to 40 patients.

Researchers are trying understand the safety of the drug and come up with a recommended dose for Phase II trials.