Researchers uncover key trigger for potent cancer-fighting mari...( An unexpected discovery in marine bi...)

An unexpected discovery in marine biomedical laboratories at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego has led to new, key information about the fundamental biological processes inside a marine organism that creates a natural product currently being tested to treat cancer in humans. The finding could lead to new applications of the natural product in treating human diseases.

A research team led by Bradley Moore, a professor with UCSDs Scripps Oceanography Center for Marine Biotechnology and Biomedicine and Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, and postdoctoral researcher Alessandra Eustquio, along with their colleagues at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, discovered an enzyme called SalL inside Salinispora tropica, a promising marine bacterium identified in 1991 by Scripps researchers.

As they describe in the most recent issue of Nature Chemical Biology, the researchers also identified a novel processa pathwayfor the way the marine bacterium incorporates a chlorine atom, the key ingredient for triggering its potent cancer-fighting natural product. Previously known methods for activating chlorine were processed through oxygen-based approaches. The new method, on the other hand, employs a substitution strategy that uses non-oxidized chlorine as it is found in nature, as with common table salt.

This was a totally unexpected pathway, said Moore. There are well over 2,000 chlorinated natural products and this is the first example in which chlorine is assimilated by this kind of pathway, said Moore.

The Salinispora derivative salinosporamide A is currently in phase I human clinical trials for the treatment of multiple myeloma and other cancers. A team led by Moore and Scripps Daniel Udwary solved the genome of S. tropica in June, an achievement that helped pave the way for the new discoveries.

Moore believes the discoveries provide a new road map for furthering S. tropicas
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