Apologies to those not interested, but for anybody else my institute's ship, research submersible, and chief coral scientist are out in the Gulf Stream doing some neat work on a deepwater reef system. Our Drugs From The Sea group found an obscure little sponge on these reefs that yields a metabolite that is showing promise as a potential cancer cure.

 

NBC video link

 

USGS is hosting daily mission coverage as well, if you want to know more about the cruise.

Edited August 14, 200916 yr by FlaSoxxJim

Cool stuff. Thanks for posting.

wow. fascinating. thanks for the info. very neat.

Apologies to those not interested, but for anybody else my institute's ship, research submersible, and chief coral scientist are out in the Gulf Stream doing some neat work on a deepwater reef system. Our Drugs From The Sea group found an obscure little sponge on these reefs that yields a metabolite that is showing promise as a potential cancer cure.

 

NBC video link

 

USGS is hosting daily mission coverage as well, if you want to know more about the cruise.

 

Cure or treatment? Cure would be huge.

Cure or treatment? Cure would be huge.

 

Wat too early to tell in this instance. But we do have two sponge-derived natural products in human clinical trials right now that are showing promise in killing a few different cancers including pancreatic cancer. One compound is called discodermolide and it's MOA is as a tubulin stabilizer that basically freezes dividing target cells in the middle of the cell cycle and basically causes them to commit cell suicide (apoptosis).

 

I don't know enough about the glass sponge yet to know the mechanism underlying its bioactivity.