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Title    Sea Corals Found to be a Source of an Elusive “Anti-Cancer” Compound
Date    Thursday June 30 2022, @10:52AM
Author    janrinok
Topic   
from the silver-bells-coral-shells-carousels dept.
https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=22/06/29/1613259

upstart writes:

Sea Corals Found To Be a Source of an Elusive "Anti-Cancer" Compound:

The ocean floor is riddled with mysteries, but scientists have just discovered one of its best-kept secrets. For the last 25 years, researchers have been looking for the source of a natural chemical that has shown promise in preliminary studies for treating cancer. Now, researchers at the University of Utah Health report that easy-to-find soft corals—flexible corals that resemble underwater plants—make the elusive compound.

After determining the source, the researchers went on to discover the animal's code for synthesizing the chemical. They were able to carry out the initial stages of re-creating the soft coral chemical in the laboratory by following those directions.

"This is the first time we have been able to do this with any drug lead on Earth," says Eric Schmidt, Ph.D., professor of medicinal chemistry at the University of Utah Health. He led the study with Paul Scesa, Ph.D., postdoctoral scientist and first author, and Zhenjian Lin, Ph.D., assistant research professor.

The breakthrough opens the door to generating the compound in big enough quantities for rigorous testing, which could one day result in a new cancer-fighting tool.

[...] Soft corals contain thousands of drug-like compounds that may be used as anti-inflammatory drugs, antibiotics, and other medicines. However, acquiring enough of these compounds has been a big obstacle to turning them into clinically useful medications. According to Schmidt, these other compounds should now be accessible using this new method.

Corals aren't the only animals that harbor potential therapeutics. Nature is crawling with snakes, spiders, and other animals known to carry chemicals with healing properties. Yet that compounds from soft corals offer distinct advantages for drug development, Schmidt says.

Unlike venomous chemicals that are injected into prey, corals use their chemicals to ward off predators that try to eat them. Since they are made to be eaten, the soft coral chemicals are easily digestible. Similarly, drugs derived from these types of compounds should be able to be given as pills with a glass of water, rather than taken by injection or other more invasive means. "These compounds are harder to find but they're easier to make in the lab and easier to take as medicine," says Schmidt.

These possibilities had been just out of reach for decades. Getting to this point took the right know-how and a little luck. [...]

Journal Reference:
Scesa, Paul D., Lin, Zhenjian, Schmidt, Eric W.. Ancient defensive terpene biosynthetic gene clusters in the soft corals, Nature Chemical Biology (DOI: 10.1038/s41589-022-01027-1)


Original Submission

Links

  1. "upstart" - https://soylentnews.org/~upstart/
  2. "Sea Corals Found To Be a Source of an Elusive "Anti-Cancer" Compound" - https://scitechdaily.com/sea-corals-found-to-be-a-source-of-an-elusive-anti-cancer-compound/
  3. "10.1038/s41589-022-01027-1" - https://doi.org/10.1038/s41589-022-01027-1
  4. "Original Submission" - https://soylentnews.org/submit.pl?op=viewsub&subid=55815

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printed from SoylentNews, Sea Corals Found to be a Source of an Elusive “Anti-Cancer” Compound on 2024-03-28 10:22:27