According to a study presented at the American Association for Cancer Research annual meeting, chaetocin, a by-product of a common wood mold, may hold promise as a new therapeutic against myeloma, an incurable bone marrow cancer.

Dr. Bible's team has shown for the first time that chaetocin has promising anti-myeloma activity. They found that chaetocin's promise includes the ability to:

* Kill myeloma cells harboring a diverse array of genetic abnormalities
* Cause biological changes and induce oxidative stress in myeloma cells, leading to their death
* Selectively kill myeloma cells with superior efficacy to commonly-used anti-myeloma drugs including dexamethasone and doxorubicin
* Reduce myeloma growth in mice
* Rapidly accumulate in cancer cells

The authors say that it will still take a few years before human clinical trials can be made, though. The study is published in the latest issue of Blood.