Nature’s Tiny Chemists

It’s not often you get a surprise phone call from one of your heroes. But that’s what happened to Dr. Nicholas Oberlies in 1998. Oberlies, now a Sullivan Distinguished Professor of Chemistry at UNCG, was a professionally unfulfilled industrial chemist at the time.

The call was from Dr. Monroe Wall, a scientist at the Research Triangle Institute in North Carolina. Wall and collaborator Dr. Mansukh Wani discovered taxol, a widely used cancer drug, in the bark of the Pacific yew tree. They also isolated camptothecin, found in certain Asian plants, which became another cancer drug.

“They are like superheroes to me,” Oberlies says. “If you talk to an oncologist, they will say that taxol changed the world.”

It’s the kind of work Oberlies had long dreamed of doing. That call brought him to the Research Triangle of North Carolina to work as Wall’s protégé and eventually to UNCG.

Now, Oberlies, assisted by dozens of students and researchers across the state, nation, and globe, is working on potentially world-changing projects. These range from searching for new cancer medicines to discovering how fungi-based chemistry could transform how electricity is generated, transmitted, and stored.

“The big idea in my research group is to understand the chemistry of nature,” Oberlies says. “People have the conception that nature is static – like a tree alone in the woods. But really, nature is sending out and receiving chemical signals all the time.”

Story Highlights

Dr. Nick Oberlies’ lab searches for cancer-fighting compounds in fungi, delves into the chemistry of medicinal herbs, and explores how fungal chemistry could make electricity cheaper and safer.

Unexplored Scientific Territory

Oberlies’ field of natural products chemistry historically focused on plants.

But plants come with challenges. Field expeditions to gather samples are time-consuming and expensive. Getting specimens back to a U.S. lab from other countries can be tricky. And growing plants takes resources – water, soil, greenhouses, and months of time as seeds or cuttings grow big enough for lab analysis.

Oberlies still works with plants. But he’s expanded his work to focus also on fungi – a scientific treasure chest full of novel, undiscovered chemistry that could help protect the environment and treat disease.

“In my lab, we are experts in isolating individual compounds from the mixtures of compounds that a plant or fungus produces,” he says. “Once we have those bioactive substances in a pure form, we carry out a multitude of experiments to figure out how the molecule is put together.”

The opportunities to discover new and potentially useful compounds from fungi are staggering. An estimated 90% of fungal species – millions – are undiscovered.

From supplement stores to gas stations, many herbal products are sold with the implication they can improve your health or address illness. There’s often little scientific backing for those claims.

Before scientists can assess whether an herbal remedy is effective, they must know what’s actually in it. That’s where Oberlies and Dr. Nadja Cech, a UNCG natural products chemistry professor, come in.

“Herbal remedies are a mixture. Sometimes they’re a mixture of five or six compounds, sometimes they’re a mixture of dozens of compounds,” Oberlies says. “If you’re going to study Herb X, I want to make sure that you actually know what the herb is.”

For the last decade, Oberlies and Cech have analyzed popular herbal products, including green tea, milk thistle, cinnamon, CBD, and kratom.

Kratom, for example, has been used in Southeast Asia, where the tree grows natively, since at least the 19th century to treat pain and other ailments. 

Tyler Graf leads the lab work on kratom, preparing materials, evaluating the chemical complexity of the samples, and sharing samples and data with collaborators around the country.

The latest initiative that has grown out of Oberlies’ lab started with a chance question by another professor in a departmental meeting.

A few years ago, Oberlies’ doctoral student Zeinab Al Subeh made a presentation to the faculty – a part of the graduate student training process in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry. They nurture rich scientific discussions that can blossom into new discoveries.

Dr. Shabnam Hematian asked the student about the “redox potential” of the fungal-derived compounds she was studying. Al Subeh didn’t know the answer – it relates to how efficiently the compound moves electrons around. However, she took the opportunity to explore the subject with one of Hematian’s electrochemistry-focused graduate students.

That started a collaboration to explore the potential of fungal chemistry in applications related to the generation, storage, and transmission of electricity. The collaboration has now bloomed into a rich, cross-university, cross-disciplinary research initiative called NICER – Nature Inspired Collaborative Energy Research.

The highly collaborative effort was kickstarted by a $1.5 million Research Opportunities Initiative – ROI – grant from the N.C. General Assembly. It’s now led by Oberlies and UNCG’s Dr. Minjeong Kim, assistant professor and associate head of computer science.

Doctoral student Reema Al-Qiam is focused on the perylenequinone class of fungal compounds and their potential energy applications.