XANADU

Xi'an–Aberystwyth Centre for Natural Product Discovery and Utilisation

BACKGROUND AND BASIS

Bringing Traditional Knowledge and Modern Science Together

Plants have transformed human society by providing medicines, crop protection agents, and other valuable natural products. Yet only a small proportion of the world's plant biodiversity has been explored for its chemical potential. Many species that thrive in harsh or extreme environments possess unique metabolic pathways that produce specialised compounds involved in defence, adaptation, and survival. These natural products represent an immense and largely untapped resource for future innovation.

Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) is one of the world's most extensive sources of botanical knowledge, encompassing thousands of medicinal plant species with centuries of documented use. Despite this rich heritage, many of these plants remain poorly understood at the molecular and chemical level.

XANADU brings together researchers from Xi'an and Aberystwyth University to combine traditional botanical knowledge with cutting-edge technologies, including metabolomics, systems biology, and artificial intelligence. By exploring under-investigated medicinal species, the partnership aims to identify novel bioactive compounds and uncover the biological mechanisms that underpin their activity.

The potential market for a TCM derived antimicrobial

From Discovery to Application

XANADU goes beyond identifying new compounds. The project seeks to understand the ecological and evolutionary factors that drive natural product biosynthesis, linking metabolite production to environmental adaptation, stress resilience, and plant-microbe interactions.

This knowledge will help answer fundamental questions about plant biology while supporting the development of:

Novel therapeutic compounds

Innovative crop protection strategies

More resilient agricultural systems

New approaches to sustainable biotechnology

Why Locoweeds?

Species of Oxytropis (locoweeds) are widely distributed across the grasslands and mountain regions of China and are renowned for their remarkable adaptation to harsh environmental conditions. These plants are best known for their association with the endophytic fungus Alternaria oxytropis, which produces the alkaloid swainsonine, the compound responsible for locoweed toxicity in grazing livestock.

Far from being simply toxic plants, Oxytropis species represent a rich and largely unexplored source of specialised metabolites. Emerging research suggests that the symbiosis between Oxytropis and Alternaria oxytropis plays a broader role in plant adaptation, influencing metabolism, stress tolerance, and ecological interactions.

For XANADU, Oxytropis provides an ideal model system to combine metabolomics, systems biology, and AI-driven analytics to explore the origins, evolution, and functions of plant natural products and their associated microbial symbionts.

Oxytropis (locoweed) in flower

Livestock affected by locoweed poisoning

Swainsonine, the alkaloid behind locoweed toxicity

Building an International Research Platform

The partnership combines Chinese expertise in medicinal plant resources and locoweed biology with Aberystwyth University's strengths in advanced metabolomics, machine learning, and systems biology. Together, the team will establish a multidisciplinary research platform capable of transforming underexplored medicinal plants into well-characterised sources of valuable natural products.

By bridging traditional knowledge with state-of-the-art omics technologies and AI-driven analysis, XANADU aims to accelerate discovery, create new opportunities for innovation, and deliver benefits for agriculture, biotechnology, and human health.

The Team

Prof. Wei He (Northwest University) and Dr. Duo Cao (Yan'an University, China)

Prof. Wei He

NORTHWEST UNIVERSITY, CHINA

Prof. Wei He (Northwest University, China) and Luis Mur collaborate on research exploring bioactive natural products from grassland and medicinal plants. Their work has generated important insights into the production of specialised metabolites arising from plant-endophyte partnerships, including compounds with significant impacts on livestock health and ecosystem function. Through integrated metabolomic, genomic and ecological approaches, the team seeks to understand how these natural products are synthesised, how environmental factors influence their accumulation, and how this knowledge can be applied to develop safer and more sustainable agricultural systems.

In collaboration with Prof. Luis Mur, Aberystwyth University

Dr. Duo Cao

YAN'AN UNIVERSITY, CHINA

Dr. Duo Cao (Yan'an University, China) collaborates with Luis Mur on natural product discovery, cancer therapeutics and translational biomedical research. Their joint publications have explored the use of plant-derived bioactives to induce ferroptosis in colorectal cancer, the repurposing of the immunomodulatory drug fingolimod to overcome chemotherapy resistance in oesophageal cancer, and the health-promoting properties of flavonoid-rich extracts from traditional medicinal plants. These studies combine natural product chemistry, metabolomics, molecular biology and cancer pharmacology to identify novel therapeutic opportunities.

In collaboration with Prof. Luis Mur, Aberystwyth University

Publications

WITH PROF. WEI HE

1. Guo C, Zhang L, Zhao Q, Beckmann M, Phillips H, Meng H, Mo C, Mur LAJ, He W. Host-Species Variation and Environment Influence Endophyte Symbiosis and Mycotoxin Levels in Chinese Oxytropis Species. Toxins (Basel). 2022 Feb 28;14(3):181.

DOI: 10.3390/toxins14030181 PMID: 35324678 PMC8948792

2. Guan H, Liu X, Fu Y, Han X, Wang Y, Li Q, Guo L, Mur LAJ, Wei Y, He W. The locoweed endophyte Alternaria oxytropis affects root development in Arabidopsis in vitro through auxin signaling and polar transport. J Exp Bot. 2023 Feb 5;74(3):931-944.

DOI: 10.1093/jxb/erac430 PMID: 36306203

3. Zhang L, Wu R, Mur LAJ, Guo C, Zhao X, Meng H, Yan D, Zhang X, Guan H, Han G, Guo B, Yue F, Wei Y, Zhao P, He W. Assembly of high-quality genomes of the locoweed Oxytropis ochrocephala and its endophyte Alternaria oxytropis provides new evidence for their symbiotic relationship and swainsonine biosynthesis. Mol Ecol Resour. 2023 Jan;23(1):253-272. Epub 2022 Aug 21.

DOI: 10.1111/1755-0998.13695 PMID: 35932461

4. Guan H, Liu X, Mur LAJ, Fu Y, Wei Y, Wang J, He W. Rethinking of the Roles of Endophyte Symbiosis and Mycotoxin in Oxytropis Plants. J Fungi (Basel). 2021 May 20;7(5):400.

DOI: 10.3390/jof7050400 PMID: 34065540 PMC8160975

5. He W, Guo L, Wang L, Zhao Q, Guo L, Cao W, Mur LAJ, Wei Y. Host Genotype and Precipitation Influence of Fungal Endophyte Symbiosis and Mycotoxin Abundance in a Locoweed. Int J Mol Sci. 2019 Oct 24;20(21):5285.

DOI: 10.3390/ijms20215285 PMID: 31652999 PMC6862532

WITH DR. DUO CAO

6. Cao D, Qu Y, Liu J, Wang J, Wei C, Zhou X, Feng J, Ma J, Mur LAJ, Chen L, Jia Q, Li M. Pteris wallichiana bioactives induce ferroptosis via the SLC7A11-GSH-GPX4 axis to directly suppress colorectal cancer. Phytomedicine. 2025 Nov 25;148:157463. Epub 2025 Oct 26.

DOI: 10.1016/j.phymed.2025.157463 PMID: 41202375

7. Cao D, Sun P, Bhowmick S, Wei Y, Guo B, Wei Y, Mur LAJ, Sun Z. Secondary metabolites of endophytic fungi isolated from Huperzia serrata. Fitoterapia. 2021 Nov;155:104970. Epub 2021 Aug 19.

DOI: 10.1016/j.fitote.2021.104970 PMID: 34419561

8. Wei H, Wang X, Wang J, Ren S, Mur LAJ, Lu D, Cao D. Flavonoids from sour jujube leaves: Ultrasound-assisted extraction, UPLC-QQQ-MS/MS quantification, and ameliorative effect on DSS-induced ulcerative colitis in mice. Ultrason Sonochem. 2025 Mar;114:107279. Epub 2025 Feb 17.

DOI: 10.1016/j.ultsonch.2025.107279 PMID: 39978127 PMC11889573

9. Lv Z, Ma J, Wei C, Wang J, Wang D, Cheng X, Chen G, Mur LAJ, Wang Y, Cao D. Green recovery of phenolics from bitter orange flowers: Natural deep eutectic solvent-ultrasound synergistic extraction, adsorptive purification, and UPLC/Q-TOF-MS/MS analysis. Ultrason Sonochem. 2025 Nov;122:107597. Epub 2025 Oct 3.

DOI: 10.1016/j.ultsonch.2025.107597 PMID: 41046751 PMC12528869