Sep 21, 2026 · 19 min · 10 segments
Send us Fan Mail A cancer therapy discovered through Australian nature sounds like folklore until you hear the data and the strategy behind it…
Ebru DavidsonGuest
Andrew MusgraveHost
And can you walk us through how tiglinol tiglate was originally discovered and what was the starting point and how did that process lead to identifying it as a promising cancer therapy?
So Cubiotics was actually founded by Dr. Victoria Gordon and Dr. Paul Riddell, both former CSIRO research scientists.
So the founders saw an opportunity to really refine the search for biologically active molecules from nature.
For example, plants produce particular chemicals to repel or attract and to access nutrients.
And having that understanding of how the natural system works, because as you can appreciate, Andrew, nature runs on chemistry, they really put together targeted strategies for identifying particular biological activity.
And it was really, the way TT came about is a really amazing Australian story.
It was certain interactions that were happening between the musky rat kangaroo, which is the smallest kangaroo, and the blushwood plant that really led them to TT.
Essentially what was happening was the musky rat kangaroo would grab the fruit of the blushwood tree, which looks much like a peach, run off with it, eat it up and then spit it out and, you know, make a funny face.
The seed of the fruit was quite unpalatable to the muskrat kangaroo, which signals that anti-herbivory activity that really gave the first clue to our founders that they were onto something.
And can you walk us through how tiglinol tiglate was originally discovered and what was the starting point and how did that process lead to identifying it as a promising cancer therapy?
So Cubiotics was actually founded by Dr. Victoria Gordon and Dr. Paul Riddell, both former CSIRO research scientists.
So the founders saw an opportunity to really refine the search for biologically active molecules from nature.
For example, plants produce particular chemicals to repel or attract and to access nutrients.
And having that understanding of how the natural system works, because as you can appreciate, Andrew, nature runs on chemistry, they really put together targeted strategies for identifying particular biological activity.
And it was really, the way TT came about is a really amazing Australian story.
It was certain interactions that were happening between the musky rat kangaroo, which is the smallest kangaroo, and the blushwood plant that really led them to TT.
Essentially what was happening was the musky rat kangaroo would grab the fruit of the blushwood tree, which looks much like a peach, run off with it, eat it up and then spit it out and, you know, make a funny face.
The seed of the fruit was quite unpalatable to the muskrat kangaroo, which signals that anti-herbivory activity that really gave the first clue to our founders that they were onto something.
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