Newswise — An estimated 30,000 Americans will die from pancreatic cancer in 2003. With nearly $1 million in funding from the National Institutes of Health, HARBOR BRANCH has recently begun a 3-year project to search for new marine animal-derived drugs to treat pancreatic cancer, in hopes of reducing that grim statistic. The work will involve directed research on compounds that have already shown potential for fighting the disease as well as testing thousands of marine organisms to discover promising new compounds.
"We're excited to have the opportunity to keep looking for treatments for cancer," says Dr. Amy Wright, director of HARBOR BRANCH's Division of Biomedical Marine Research, "and we're especially excited about working on pancreatic cancer, a disease for which there currently are very few treatment options."
To prepare for the application to NIH for funding, HARBOR BRANCH researchers began exploratory work looking for pancreatic cancer fighters about two years ago. "We have some really interesting leads already," says Dr. Wright.
This early work was supported in part by a private donor from California whose physician husband died of pancreatic cancer. She made a substantial donation to support the institution's drug discovery work after learning about the program from the Discovery Channel documentary Forbidden Depths, which chronicled a HARBOR BRANCH expedition to Cuba. "This donation really made a difference," says Wright.
Under the new grant researchers will work diligently to discover the biological mechanisms by which promising compounds kills cancer cells. A key step in this process is to determine the compound's chemical structure, which will often give clues about its biological behavior by way of comparison to other known compounds. Gaining such knowledge is a critical step before pharmaceutical companies can consider a new compound's commercial potential. If a potential drug turns out to be too toxic, attacking in a way that affects all kinds of cells rather than just cancerous ones, for instance, then it is not the best pharmaceutical candidate.
Another major component of the new project will be to screen thousands of marine organisms to discover additional compounds that might be used in the fight against pancreatic cancer. Though a wide range of animals will be examined, work will focus mainly on invertebrates such as sponges, which, because they remain stationary and unable to avoid predators, often develop strong chemical defenses.
Initial tests on samples involve studying the effect of extracts from organisms on living cancer cells. Scientists will be working with samples from the institution's organism archive collected during countless expeditions over the past decades and stored frozen in a hurricane-proof bunker. They will also study the cancer-fighting potential of new organisms collected on upcoming expeditions, some of which will be supported by funding received through HARBOR BRANCH's role as a partner in the new state-funded Center of Excellence for Biomedical and Marine Biotechnology.
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