Sponges to treat leukemia?????

[Guest guest]

You never know where you will find information. I was watching the news on the

hurricanes and they were concerned for the deep sea sponges, which they

mentioned

were used in the treatment of leukemia. My antenna went up and I looked it up

and only found one reference in my favorite search engine and I am going to

share it. It's a very lengthy article if you are interested in sponges; they

have been around a long time and will probably be around after the last human

leaves the earth. I have just highlighted the parts about leukemia and you can

do more research on it, but what caught my eye was that Novartis is already

working on cancer drugs with the sponges.

Many compounds extracted from sponges have also anti-viral, anti-neoplastic and

anti-cancer properties. Back in the 1950s, chemists found compounds in a sponge

in the waters off the coast of Florida that wound up as antiviral drugs

Acyclovir (Zovirax®), to treat herpes, and Cytarabine (Cytosar®), to treat

non-Hodgkin's lymphoma6.

Novartis Pharma AG licensed Discodermolide, a metabolite of the deep-sea sponge,

Discodermia dissolute, discovered by Pomponi in the waters off the Bahamas, in

1998 for development as a candidate agent for treatment of cancers.

Halichondrin B, first isolated from the Japanese sponge Halichondria okadai, has

shown promise in vivo as a treatment for melanoma and leukemia and is currently

in pre-clinical trials at the NCI with material obtained from the New Zealand

deep-water sponge Lissodendoryx.

http://www.allthesea.com/Sea-Sponge.html

FYI,

Lottie Duthu

[Guest guest]

This is all cool stuff Lottie.

Thanks for bringing interesting information to the list. I have heard some

researchers say that they expect that most of the new drugs in the future will

come from botanicals.

C.