Sea creatures from the Red Sea have been the focus of scientific researchers for many years. The Red Sea is one of the saltiest and hottest bodies of water in the world. The creatures that live in the hostile environment of the Red Sea are unique in being able to survive extreme conditions. Creatures from the Red Sea are the focus of many studies due their ability to survive in almost lethal environments, including toxic solutions of salt water high in cyanide and other deadly substances. I asked Jody Victor® to tell us more about it.
Jody Victor®: Researchers say that these Red Sea creatures are giving them some of the best tools to combat cancer. One such Red Sea creature, the Red Sea coral, has been studied for the last five years at South Dakota State University (SDSU). Distinguished professor Chandradhar Dwivedi, head of the Pharmaceutical Sciences Department in the College of Pharmacy at SDSU, and Hesham Fahmy, a chemist who already has one patent for his work at the University of Mississippi, have been working on the project together since Fahmy joined SDSU’s College of Pharmacy in 2004. They are now pursuing licensing of their patent based on their collaborative research of sarcophine from Red Sea coral for use in sunscreens.
Exposure to ultraviolet light, especially in the summer months, can contribute to skin cancer. People who spend long hours exposed to sunlight, such as farmers and construction workers, are the most at risk. As people are becoming more aware of the skin cancer risks from over-exposure to sunlight they are making a bigger effort to wear sunscreens. “We have been saying for a long time that prevention is the best medicine,” Dwivedi says. “We have to make the effort to prevent the disease before we treat it.”
Sarcophine-diol is a molecule made from a product called sarcophine that can be isolated from soft coral found in the Red Sea. Dwivedi and Fahmy’s study on sarcophine-diol began as possibly using it for the prevention of skin cancer in sunscreens and has morphed into the possibility of using it as a tool to actually treat skin cancer. As they studied sarcophine-diol for use in sunscreens they found that it did not simply block ultraviolet radiation but also reversed the damage caused by the ultraviolet radiation.
SDSU’s research on the use of sarcophine-diol in sunscreens has opened up numerous possibilities for its use not only for prevention of skin cancer by inhibiting cell growth in cancers but also as a way to reverse the damage by inducing orderly, programmed cell death of cancer cells. Sarcophine-diol is effective in micrograms, as compared to milligrams, for other chemo-preventative products. In other words it is effective in a concentration of about one-thousandth of what is suggested for other chemo-preventative agents. They found that sarcophine-diol could be used both for chemoprevention and as a chemotherapeutic agent for use against non-melanoma skin cancer development.
Their studies have shown that sarcophine-diol did not induce what scientists call necrosis, the premature death of healthy cells. The importance of this finding is that sarcophine-diol could be used in treatments that specifically target cancer cells without damaging nearby healthy cells. They also found that treatments with higher concentrations of sarcophine-diol induced a higher level of “executioner” proteins that have a role in apopsis, or programmed cell death. And more importantly, sarcophine-diol did not significantly increase the level of “executioner” proteins in normal cells, suggesting that it is considerably more toxic to skin tumor cells than to healthy cells.
“We hope to include it in sun screen or lotion. Apply it once, and you are set for the day. We are hopeful that it will not only prevent skin cancer but may actually treat skin cancer,” Dwivedi says.
All the Best!