New Brunswick·New
New research led by University of New Brunswick chemists may revolutionize the way some drugs are manufactured.
Discovery of a protein in plant could lead to greater, less expensive yields of cancer-fighting drug

Jordan Gill · CBC News
· Posted: Jul 28, 2026 2:06 PM EDT | Last Updated: 19 minutes ago
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Yang Qu, centre, an associate professor of chemistry at UNB, and two other researchers pose with the Madagascar periwinkle, the flower behind their research. (University of New Brunswick)
New research led by University of New Brunswick chemists could revolutionize the way some drugs are manufactured.
The UNB researchers, along with researchers at Zhejiang and Westlake universities in China, have discovered how some plants are able to manufacture drugs used to treat cancer.
Now that it’s known how plants manufacture the drug, Yang Qu, an associate professor of chemistry at UNB, who led the UNB research team, said it should be possible to create the drug in the lab much faster.
“We discovered that the efficiency has so much improved, in fact, that we could produce this drug nearly 1,000 times higher than previously reported values,” Qu said.
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