{"id":139752,"date":"2022-05-23T23:03:32","date_gmt":"2022-05-24T04:03:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2022\/05\/sea-corals-are-source-of-sought-after-anti-cancer-compound"},"modified":"2022-05-23T23:03:32","modified_gmt":"2022-05-24T04:03:32","slug":"sea-corals-are-source-of-sought-after-anti-cancer-compound","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2022\/05\/sea-corals-are-source-of-sought-after-anti-cancer-compound","title":{"rendered":"Sea corals are source of sought-after \u2018anti-cancer\u2019 compound"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/sea-corals-are-source-of-sought-after-anti-cancer-compound2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The bottom of the ocean is full of mysteries but scientists have recently uncovered one of its best-kept secrets. For 25 years, drug hunters have been searching for the source of a natural chemical that had shown promise in initial studies for treating cancer. Now, researchers at University of Utah Health report that easy-to-find soft corals\u2014flexible corals that resemble underwater plants\u2014make the elusive compound.<\/p>\n<p>Identifying the source allowed the researchers to go a step further and find the animal\u2019s DNA code for synthesizing the chemical. By following those instructions, they were able to carry out the first steps of re-creating the soft coral chemical in the laboratory.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is the first time we have been able to do this with any drug lead on Earth,\u201d says Eric Schmidt, Ph.D., professor of medicinal chemistry at U of U Health. He led the study with Paul Scesa, Ph.D., postdoctoral scientist and first author, and Zhenjian Lin, Ph.D., assistant research professor.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The bottom of the ocean is full of mysteries but scientists have recently uncovered one of its best-kept secrets. For 25 years, drug hunters have been searching for the source of a natural chemical that had shown promise in initial studies for treating cancer. Now, researchers at University of Utah Health report that easy-to-find soft [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":579,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,19,1495],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-139752","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-chemistry","category-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139752","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/579"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=139752"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139752\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=139752"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=139752"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=139752"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}