*NEWS*OCEAN WATERS YIELD CANCER THERAPY

[Anonymous]

Ocean waters yield cancer therapy

Scientists believe they can make cancer drugs from the humble
sea squirt.

A microbe that lives within this sea animal produces compounds that may fight
some tumours.

Using laboratory techniques they say it should be possible to produce enough
of the compounds without having to destroy a large number of sea squirts.

The University of Utah work, funded by the National Science Foundation, is
described in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Coral reefs and other ocean environments are like rainforests – full of natural chemicals to potentially treat human disease Researcher Dr Eric Schmidt

Professor Marcel Jaspers, at the University of Aberdeen, along with
colleagues from the Australian Institute of Marine Science, have made similar
discoveries by looking at the sea squirt.

The Utah researchers discovered that Prochloron microbes, which live
inside the sea squirt Lissoclinum patella , produce two compounds called
patellamide A and C, which are thought to have anti-cancer properties.

Next, they pinpointed the gene pathways that the microbes used to make these
compounds.

Researcher Dr Eric Schmidt said: “Coral reefs and other ocean environments
are like rainforests – full of natural chemicals to potentially treat human
disease.

“Unfortunately, it’s difficult to supply pharmaceuticals from these delicate
environments. We have solved this by finding specific genes for the synthesis of
chemicals using laboratory bacteria.”

Eco-friendly

Their Prochloron genome project – in collaboration with Margo Haygood
at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San
Diego – is still under way.

Dr Matthew Fletcher, lecturer in Organic Chemistry at the University of
Wales, UK, and member of the Society of Chemical Industry, said: “This is a step
forward towards simpler, sustainable methods – using a combination of chemical
and microbiological techniques – for the production of “drugs from the deep”
that avoid the harvesting and destruction of unsustainably large quantities of
marine organisms.

“The marine environment is a realm of biological and chemical diversity, and
the marine organisms that live in it are a rich source of intriguing and unusual
molecules with the potential to become powerful drugs.

“However, these molecules are usually present in minute quantities in rare
organisms.

“So instead of diving for these ‘pearls’ of great price – ravaging the marine
environment – we need to develop sustainable methods for the production of
drugs.”

[Author]

May 15, 2005 at 10:40 AM