Coral reefs may have key to cancer cure: Study
Zee News
In a recent report, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) said the number of Indians suffering from cancer is expected to increase to 29.8 million in 2025.
New Delhi: For decades, scientists have been looking for that elusive cure to cancer. Though humankind has made several strides in this direction, cancer still accounts for nearly 10 million or one in six deaths globally every year, according to the World Health Organization. And now, scientists at the University of Utah, United States, have discovered a natural anti-cancer chemical in sea corals off the Florida coast, in what is being considered a significant step in the fight against cancer. The chemical called eleutherobin is made by easy-to-find soft and flexible corals resembling underwater plants.
Back in 1990s, eleutherobin was identified in a rare coral off Australia, but since then, marine scientists have been unable to find it in high enough quantities for lab tests. According to researchers, the “holy grail” chemical is used by corals as a defence against predators, but it can also inhibit the growth of cancer cells.
The University of Utah team, led by Eric Schmidt, professor of medicinal chemistry, and comprising Paul Scesa, postdoctoral scientist and first author, and Zhenjian Lin, assistant research professor, is now trying to recreate the chemical in the laboratory.
The first major challenge was the belief that similar to other kinds of marine life, the chemical was synthesised by symbiotic organisms that lived inside the animals. “It didn’t make sense. We knew that corals must make eleutherobin,” Scesa was quoted as saying in a University of Utah press release.
“The next step was to find out whether the coral’s genetic code carried instructions for making the compound. Advances in DNA technology had recently made it possible to rapidly piece together the code of any species. The difficulty was, the scientists didn’t know what the instructions for making the chemical should look like,” the press release added.
