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Now, talking of previous ages, it was once believed that the remains of the ancient pharaohs
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carefully swaddled in strips of cloth and encased in embellished tombs, would unleash a deadly curse upon whoever dared to disturb them
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But scientists today say that a fatal fungus within them, which struck dead several archaeologists at the turn of the century
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could now be a miracle cancer drug. To find out now more, I'm joined by Professor Elaine Bignall
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Professor of Medical Mycology at the University of Exeter, specialising in human fungal pathogen research, which sounds terrifying
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Professor Bignall, thank you very much indeed for joining us. Can I ask you, first of all, is there some sense that this could be the next penicillin we're talking about here
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Well, good evening, Andrew, and thanks very much for featuring this topic. Any discovery of a bioactive molecule produced by a microorganism, in this case a fungus
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that has a demonstrated useful purpose in human medicine is essentially a new penicillin, if you like
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in terms of the magnitude of that discovery. So in the past, a lot of these discoveries were serendipitous
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but now technology allows us to look at fungal genomes and the products that they produce and try to trace those
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with much more dexterity and accuracy than we ever could before. Fascinating
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and to be clear, these are tiny pieces of fungus which were wrapped around the dead pharaoh
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way back at sort of 3000 BC or whenever it was when they were put into their caskets
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and have been revealed again in the modern world having vanished everywhere else in the interim, yes
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Well, these fungi have always been around us, Andrew and actually they cause immense problems
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spoiling crops in the present day. The theory is that the cereals that were placed into the graves as grave goods harboured fungi that were degrading those cereals and those fungi are able as we know to produce very very potent toxins so the fungus that that has been
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implicated in the Tutankhamun story is the fungus that produces one of the most toxic small chemicals
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known to man and this we know can be deadly. This is the pharaoh's curse that sort of
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whacked down people who first opened the tombs. Now that we know that it has this very very useful
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potential in medicine what kind of diseases might it be used for? What kind of remedies will it
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provide okay so um this particular small molecule that has recently been identified
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um which is called an asparagin mycin um the scientists have discovered that this
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is able to stop immune cells from dividing so it could be a very important intervention
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in tumour formulation and expansion. But we don't really know in many instances
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why fungi harbour these small molecules that are highly active. So what advantage they deliver to the fungus is often unknown
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Of course, when penicillin was discovered, we knew that it was bioactive in terms of preventing bacteria from growing
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But that was an accidental discovery in a Petri dish. unlocking the secrets of fungi in the current day
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it includes an awful lot of detective work that means looking at what the fungal species is
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when it produces the toxin and what the toxin would be a lot to discover in the future
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well let's just hope the Tutankhamun can save us from terrible things in the here and now
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that would be a wonderful thing to think Professor Bignall thank you so much for talking to me
