Sugar transforms a traditional Chinese medicine into a cruise missile

More than 20 years ago, a billboard in China piqued the interest of a chemical biologist. It endorsed an extract from the plant known as the "thunder god vine" as an immunosuppressant. A brief review of published research revealed that the extract's key ingredient—the small molecule triptolide—had been identified 20 years before that billboard ad, and it could stop cells from multiplying.

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