{"id":219475,"date":"2025-08-06T00:03:14","date_gmt":"2025-08-06T05:03:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/08\/sea-cucumbers-could-hold-key-to-stopping-cancer-spread"},"modified":"2025-08-06T00:03:14","modified_gmt":"2025-08-06T05:03:14","slug":"sea-cucumbers-could-hold-key-to-stopping-cancer-spread","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/08\/sea-cucumbers-could-hold-key-to-stopping-cancer-spread","title":{"rendered":"Sea Cucumbers Could Hold Key to Stopping Cancer Spread"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/sea-cucumbers-could-hold-key-to-stopping-cancer-spread.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>OXFORD, Miss. \u2013 Sea cucumbers are the ocean\u2019s janitors, cleaning the seabed and recycling nutrients back into the water. But this humble marine invertebrate could also hold the key to stopping the spread of cancer.<\/p>\n<p>A sugar compound found in sea cucumbers can effectively block Sulf-2, an enzyme that plays a major role in cancer growth, according to a University of Mississippi-led study published in Glycobiology.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMarine life produces compounds with unique structures that are often rare or not found in terrestrial vertebrates,\u201d said Marwa Farrag, a fourth-year doctoral candidate in the UM Department of BioMolecular Sciences.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd so, the sugar compounds in sea cucumbers are unique. They aren\u2019t commonly seen in other organisms. That\u2019s why they\u2019re worth studying.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Farrag, a native of Assiut, Egypt, and the study\u2019s lead author, worked with a team of researchers from Ole Miss and Georgetown University on the project.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>OXFORD, Miss. \u2013 Sea cucumbers are the ocean\u2019s janitors, cleaning the seabed and recycling nutrients back into the water. But this humble marine invertebrate could also hold the key to stopping the spread of cancer. A sugar compound found in sea cucumbers can effectively block Sulf-2, an enzyme that plays a major role in cancer [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":534,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-219475","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219475","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\/534"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=219475"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219475\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=219475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=219475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=219475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}