MIAMi-project

In ancient Greek mythology a man called Tantalus experienced a special kind of hell: Even though he was standing neck-deep inside crystal clear water, with juicy, red apples hanging right down from the trees above him, he still had to starve and thirst for eternity. Since whenever he tried to drink or eat, both the water and the apples moved away from him, always staying just out of reach. A perfect definition of “so close, yet so far”.

In a similar, albeit admittedly less dramatic, position do pharmacists and biologists find themselves when they try to find new medicinal substances within in the vast richness of our plant biosphere. Just within the substance class of monoterpenoid indole alkaloids (MIAs) alone there are already more than 2000 compounds known to exists. Many of those that have been studied belong to the most interesting pharmaceuticals we have: From the anti-cancer blockbusters vincristine and vinblastine to the exotic psychedelic ibogaine and the poison stychnine. However, despite this very promising track-record, the overwhelming majority of MIA substances is only superficially researched or even not researched at all.

On the first glance this sounds like a paradise for researchers. A highly biological active substance-class with thousands of yet uncharacterized compounds? That´s like a sea of publications lying directly beneath our feet! Dozens of valuable, new medications that could potentially better the lives of millions of people in hands reach.

Yet, the story takes a sudden twist once we ask WHY most of these substances are not well researched yet. The single most prominent problem is their terribly low availability in nature. As it turns out many highly interesting natural products can only be found in minuscule amounts in often exotic, rare or slow-growing plants. This makes efficient isolation of meaningful amounts virtually impossible, which in turn heavily slows down or even completely inhibits further research.