Plants, fungi and bacteria produce a variety of bioactives that alter cell metabolism, sometimes to the point of cell death.This makes them promising candidates for new anti-cancer drugs. Although a diverse range of bioactives exists, the development of new anti-cancer drugs is proving difficult, because of the time-consuming elucidation of their mode of action. Scientists from the Leibniz Institute of Plant Biochemistry and partners at the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg have now taken a major step towards overcoming this hurdle. With their modern analysis of cellular metabolites and AI-based evaluation, they have successfully predicted the mode of action of new anti-cancer drugs.