Question: Do you think we could find the cure of cancer in natural substances like plants?

Emma Daniels answered on 12 Jun 2020:

Hi Ana, great question! There are lots of examples of medicines that were first found in nature. For example, Alexander Flemming famously discovered penicillin after he forgot about a petri dish of bacteria. When he came back to the dish, he saw mold had grown all over it, and wherever there was mold, the bacteria had died. Penicillin is now a widely used antibiotic drug! Another example is quinine, which is used to treat malaria. Quinine was first found in the bark of the cinchona tree, so people used to chew on bark to treat malaria! So, it is possible that similar discoveries could be made to help find a treatment for cancer.