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Found: The Anticancer Sponge
Courtesy of M. Carroll/Harbor Branch |
The sponge eluded scientists for 20 years because it lives in what researchers refer to as “the dead zone,” a relatively unpopulated depth of the Caribbean. “We don’t usually study this zone, because every time we’ve done it, we haven’t found much,” Wright says. Her team is now scrambling to isolate an anticancer drug from the gray, rock-hard sea creature. The compound might help the animal defend against predatory fish, or it might actually be produced by symbiotic microbes living on the creature’s surface. Wright has found many curative compounds in other sponges and bacteria and doesn’t always care that she cannot figure out their original function. “Fortuitously, they work in mammalian systems like ours,” she says.