The Deep Sea’s Treasure Trove – Marine Natural Products as Potential Cancer Therapeutics
The oceans are a rich source of bioactive natural products. Natural products, or secondary metabolites, are small molecules made by organisms that are not essential to sustain life, but presumably confer an evolutionary advantage to the organism that makes it. Over 62% of drugs can be traced back to natural products. This lecture will focus on the biology side of Harbor Branch’s drug discovery program. The Cell Biology Group focuses on finding compounds with utility against cancer, the 2nd leading cause of death in the United States. Marine natural products represent a wealth of potential treatments against cancer, and this talk will highlight discovery efforts done recently to identify potential novel treatments for different types of cancer including lung, pancreatic, and triple negative breast cancer.