Scientists crack the bottleneck on a lifesaving cancer drug — boosting production 1,000-fold in yeast

Fri, 17 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0800

There’s a cruel math problem at the heart of one of the world’s most important cancer drugs. Vinblastine, a chemotherapy staple used to treat Hodgkin’s lymphoma, testicular cancer, and breast cancer, is extracted exclusively from the leaves of the Madagascar periwinkle plant. It takes two metric tons of dried leaves to produce a single gram.

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Scientists crack the bottleneck on a lifesaving cancer drug — boosting production 1,000-fold in yeast