Researchers at the University of Utah Health say soft corals provide anti-cancer benefits.
This discovery makes it possible to create compounds in large quantities. Further, this will be thoroughly tested and, perhaps, this will lead to the creation of a new drug to fight cancer.
Soft corals contain thousands of medicinalcompounds that can act as anti-inflammatory agents, antibiotics and more. But it is difficult to obtain compounds in large quantities. This slows down the process of creating medicines from them.
Corals use their own chemicalsto scare away predators that try to eat them. Since they are designed to be eaten, the body easily absorbs soft coral chemicals. Medicines derived from these types of compounds will be available in tablet form rather than injections. These compounds are harder to find, but easier to make in the laboratory and more convenient to take as medicine, the authors note.
The authors of the work used a new approach toget enough eleutherobin. They found out whether the coral's genetic code contained "instructions" for making the compound. This turned out to be true. Researchers found sections of coral DNA that resembled the genetic instructions for similar types of connections in other species.
Next, they modified the bacteria to follow these DNA instructions and repeated the first steps to create an anti-cancer compound.
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