Scientists have recently discovered one of the best-kept secrets of the ocean. Drug hunters have been looking for the source of a natural chemical that has shown promise in initial studies for treating cancer for 25 years. Researchers at the University of Utah Health have found that soft corals that look like underwater plants make the compound.
The researchers were able to find the animal's DNA code for synthesizing the chemical by identifying the source. They were able to carry out the first steps of re-creating the soft coral chemical by following the instructions.
This is the first time we have been able to do this with any drug lead on Earth, according to Eric Schmidt, professor of Medicinal chemistry at U of U Health. He was the leader of the study with Paul Scesa and Zhenjian Lin.
One day, the compound could be used to fight cancer if the advance is anything to go by.
A second research group led by Bradley Moore from the University of California, San Diego independently showed that corals make related molecule. The studies were published in the May 23 issue of Nature Chemical Biology.
A world of possibilities.
There are thousands of drug-like compounds in soft corals that could work as anti-Inflammatory agents, antibiotics, and more. Getting enough of these compounds is a major barrier to developing them into drugs. The other compounds should be accessible using this new approach.
Corals are not the only animals that have potential. Nature is crawling with animals that carry healing chemicals. The compounds from soft corals offer advantages for drug development.
Unlike venomous chemicals that are injected into prey, corals use their chemicals to ward off predators that try to eat them. The soft coral chemicals are easy to digest. Drugs derived from these types of compounds should be able to be given as pills with a glass of water, rather than being injected.
These possibilities were out of reach for a long time. It took the right know-how and a little luck to get to this point.
The source is being hunted for.
Scesa found the compound in a common species of soft coral just a mile from his brother's apartment. Scientists reported in the 1990s that a coral near Australia had anti-cancer properties. Soft corals use the chemical as a defense against predators. The compound was found to be a potent blocker of cancer cell growth.
In the decades after, scientists couldn't find the holy grail chemical in the quantities needed for drug development and couldn't remedy the problem without understanding how the chemical was made. Similar to other kinds of marine life, the chemical was synthesised by organisms that lived inside the animals.
It didn't make sense, Scesa says.
Scesa seemed to be the perfect person to solve the mystery. As a boy growing up in Florida, the ocean was his playground, and he spent countless hours exploring its depths and wildlife. In graduate school, he developed a penchant for organic chemistry and combined it with his other interests to better understand the chemical diversity of the seas.
He joined the lab of natural products scientist to find the source of the drug lead. Scesa brought live coral samples from Florida to Utah to see if he could find the answer.
The recipe can be decoded.
The next step was to find out if the coral had instructions for making the compound. It is now possible to piece together the code of any species in a matter of minutes. The scientists didn't know what the instructions were for making the chemical. Imagine searching for a recipe in a cookbook and not knowing what the words mean.
It's like going into the dark and looking for an answer that you don't know.
The problem was solved by finding regions of coral DNA that were similar to genetic instructions for similar types of compounds. The first steps of making the potential cancer therapeutic were mimicked by the microorganisms after they were grown in the lab.
The source of eleutherobin was proved to be soft corals. It was shown that it was possible to make the compound in the lab. They are working on filling in the missing steps of the compound and figuring out the best way to produce large amounts of the drug.
Scesa hopes to one day hand these to a doctor.
More information: Eric Schmidt, Ancient defensive terpene biosynthetic gene clusters in the soft corals, Nature Chemical Biology (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41589-022-01027-1. www.nature.com/articles/s41589-022-01027-1 Journal information: Nature Chemical Biology Citation: Sea corals are source of sought-after 'anti-cancer' compound (2022, May 23) retrieved 23 May 2022 from https://phys.org/news/2022-05-sea-corals-source-sought-after-anti-cancer.html This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only.
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