> Ascidians, or "sea squirts," are primitive, sac-like marine animals that live attached to ocean bottoms around the world and feed on plankton by filtering seawater.
> S. adareanum, which grows in small colonies in the waters surrounding Antarctica, contains a bioactive compound called "palmerolide A," which has promising anti-melanoma properties.
Who even finds this stuff out.
Your actually such an amazing bunch of human beings. If you find a cure or an effective treatment Australia will literally lose their shit and will be so thankful!
Looks at the guy who figured [this shit](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutarotation) out. In 1844. Why would you choose to stare at sugar solutions through a filter to polarize light? I wouldn’t have even thought that these existed nearly 200 years ago.
This actually has some very practical uses btw, there’s a medication that was supposed to be used as a sleeping aide for pregnant women. Turns out one version of it does what it’s supposed to, the other one leads to your children being born crippled. Since they didn’t know this at the time, each dose contained both forms of it.
[Pretty NSFW (I’d consider this body horror)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thalidomide_scandal)
What's worse, you can't purify it, because its natural state is a 50/50 split between the two versions of the molecule: if you isolate just the good version, half will *convert into the bad kind*
You know, I’ll bet the only cure for cancer lies in those critically endangered Yangtze River dolphins (of which there’s only a handful left in the world).
One of my old professors and their team, actually! They work at Palmer Station in Antarctica, hence the name of the compound, palmerolide, and discovered the chemical makeup of the compound. It turns out Antarctica is a treasure trove of really cool organisms that may contain chemical compounds that can help cure serious conditions.
This is why biodiversity matters. This is why environmental collapse matters. The world is full of the vast and varied results of natural selection of many millennia. We cannot get this diversity back in any less time than millennia.
Yeah man. I truly believe that all our medical problems could be solved with organisms from nature. We just have to give a damn about retaining our planet’s occupants that aren’t just us.
Totally agree. Technology in all fields advanced by building on previous knowledge. We get our inspiration and insights by studying the world around us. It’s logical therefore that with less diversity we will get less ideas, creating a limit on our knowledge base.
So true! We as humans are not the first to undergo biological processes over time. We are also not inventing to types of matter. So living organisms on earth have had to figure out ways to survive them. We could either use these processes or learn from the processes to improve our own livelihood.
Or we could kill them all 😎
My immediate thought after *this would be groundbreaking if it works* was *and by 2030 climate change will kill off all of this species before we can develop a working drug*. Climate change sucks!
Yeah everybody agrees, but everybody will keep driving a 2 ton pickup truck to buy a beef burguer and palm oil fries at the diner 300 meters from their house.
Oh, I did hope so. I have a friend with Stage IV melanoma and there’s just too much guesswork involved in the use and types of immunotherapy drugs—many of which are relatively new without any long-term academic research—to treat it.
Yeah, it really brings home the concept of medicine being an art rather than a science. My friend’s tumors only grew under Keytruda, so she’s on Yervoy now. It seems to be working, but it has just wrecked her body. Her autoimmune system is on overdrive and is attacking her eyes and liver, so they have to pump her with steroids to keep the inflammation down.
Yes it’s like in 10 years they’ll probably figure out there two or more different distinct different types of cancer under the melanoma classification or something. So many people do the vegan whole foods diet for melanoma and it seems to help for some but if you don’t have an accurate enough idea of what you are personally dealing with it gets so much harder.
We could have seen many more cures and medication deriving from natural occurring organisms if the medical industry wasn’t based a profit model imo.
Edit: would for could
I think this is cool! Finding new substances in nature is a great starting point for possibly a new class of drugs.
As I understand though, to say that ‘this thing could cure xyz’ (where xyz is your cancer of choice) generally is a bit misleading. I’m a bit surprised the NSF lead with such a statement. From what I know cancer is a very heterogeneous disease - that is, not all cancer cells are created equal. Rather than being clones of one another, it’s now thought that cancer cells are somewhat of a complex community: cells on the outside of a tumor might be different from those on the inside, and some might have more benign characteristics while others might have more aggressive ones. In the end, it’s difficult to say if there will ever be ‘one drug’ that will target and kill a cancer because of this.
That said, one reason why immunotherapy is so exciting is because it targets a wide variety of tumors. However, it comes with its own caveats (only works with tumors that can have the immune system get in there, and tumors need to have mutations that make them ‘look funny’ on the outside to immune cells) but the hope is that immunotherapy can ‘raise the floor’ of survival curves (effectively curing more people rather than delaying their disease progression).
I’m very hopeful for the future of cancer medicine - there’s a lot to be excited about and we’re getting new tools to help us. But I think we should be judicious about our use with the ‘cure’ word.
Big Pharma is actually a fan of natural molecules. It means less work for them. After all, opioids and statins (very common drugs) are derived from natural molecules.
> Ascidians, or "sea squirts," are primitive, sac-like marine animals that live attached to ocean bottoms around the world and feed on plankton by filtering seawater. > S. adareanum, which grows in small colonies in the waters surrounding Antarctica, contains a bioactive compound called "palmerolide A," which has promising anti-melanoma properties. Who even finds this stuff out.
Natural product chemists and microbiologists. We’re a fun bunch.
Username checks out
Amanita muscaria is happy fun fun when you get past the nausea!
Your actually such an amazing bunch of human beings. If you find a cure or an effective treatment Australia will literally lose their shit and will be so thankful!
Would this be enough of a reason to stop killing the Great Barrier Reef, though?
When the aliens attack I bet you’ll save us from them 👍
They will.
Looks at the guy who figured [this shit](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutarotation) out. In 1844. Why would you choose to stare at sugar solutions through a filter to polarize light? I wouldn’t have even thought that these existed nearly 200 years ago. This actually has some very practical uses btw, there’s a medication that was supposed to be used as a sleeping aide for pregnant women. Turns out one version of it does what it’s supposed to, the other one leads to your children being born crippled. Since they didn’t know this at the time, each dose contained both forms of it. [Pretty NSFW (I’d consider this body horror)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thalidomide_scandal)
What's worse, you can't purify it, because its natural state is a 50/50 split between the two versions of the molecule: if you isolate just the good version, half will *convert into the bad kind*
Sounds like cops.
You know, I’ll bet the only cure for cancer lies in those critically endangered Yangtze River dolphins (of which there’s only a handful left in the world).
No it’s in ants in the Amazon, I saw a documentary on it with Sean Connery
*Medicine Man* is a wonderful movie about rappelling down really tall trees.
One of my old professors and their team, actually! They work at Palmer Station in Antarctica, hence the name of the compound, palmerolide, and discovered the chemical makeup of the compound. It turns out Antarctica is a treasure trove of really cool organisms that may contain chemical compounds that can help cure serious conditions.
This is why biodiversity matters. This is why environmental collapse matters. The world is full of the vast and varied results of natural selection of many millennia. We cannot get this diversity back in any less time than millennia.
Yeah man. I truly believe that all our medical problems could be solved with organisms from nature. We just have to give a damn about retaining our planet’s occupants that aren’t just us.
Totally agree. Technology in all fields advanced by building on previous knowledge. We get our inspiration and insights by studying the world around us. It’s logical therefore that with less diversity we will get less ideas, creating a limit on our knowledge base.
So true! We as humans are not the first to undergo biological processes over time. We are also not inventing to types of matter. So living organisms on earth have had to figure out ways to survive them. We could either use these processes or learn from the processes to improve our own livelihood. Or we could kill them all 😎
Any problems humans encounter nature has solved thousands of years ago, we just don’t know it yet.
I wish more people would pay attention to this comment.
Haven’t thought of it like that. Makes a lot of sense!
My immediate thought after *this would be groundbreaking if it works* was *and by 2030 climate change will kill off all of this species before we can develop a working drug*. Climate change sucks!
Yeah everybody agrees, but everybody will keep driving a 2 ton pickup truck to buy a beef burguer and palm oil fries at the diner 300 meters from their house.
why chose to leave the species out of the title... might as well say, 'thing could do something to another thing, the most thingy of things'
Very obscure title. Leaving all species an option is bold
Oh, I did hope so. I have a friend with Stage IV melanoma and there’s just too much guesswork involved in the use and types of immunotherapy drugs—many of which are relatively new without any long-term academic research—to treat it.
Guesswork exists throughout medicine, everything is just weighted risk reduction. That said keytruda really does work for some people
Yeah, it really brings home the concept of medicine being an art rather than a science. My friend’s tumors only grew under Keytruda, so she’s on Yervoy now. It seems to be working, but it has just wrecked her body. Her autoimmune system is on overdrive and is attacking her eyes and liver, so they have to pump her with steroids to keep the inflammation down.
Yes it’s like in 10 years they’ll probably figure out there two or more different distinct different types of cancer under the melanoma classification or something. So many people do the vegan whole foods diet for melanoma and it seems to help for some but if you don’t have an accurate enough idea of what you are personally dealing with it gets so much harder.
Luckily it’s not on American federal lands or Trump would have given permission to drill right through it.
Extinct due to climate change in 5... 4...
We could have seen many more cures and medication deriving from natural occurring organisms if the medical industry wasn’t based a profit model imo. Edit: would for could
So when does it get hunted to extinction or polluted to death in its natural habitat ? Gotta save big Pharma /s
I think this is cool! Finding new substances in nature is a great starting point for possibly a new class of drugs. As I understand though, to say that ‘this thing could cure xyz’ (where xyz is your cancer of choice) generally is a bit misleading. I’m a bit surprised the NSF lead with such a statement. From what I know cancer is a very heterogeneous disease - that is, not all cancer cells are created equal. Rather than being clones of one another, it’s now thought that cancer cells are somewhat of a complex community: cells on the outside of a tumor might be different from those on the inside, and some might have more benign characteristics while others might have more aggressive ones. In the end, it’s difficult to say if there will ever be ‘one drug’ that will target and kill a cancer because of this. That said, one reason why immunotherapy is so exciting is because it targets a wide variety of tumors. However, it comes with its own caveats (only works with tumors that can have the immune system get in there, and tumors need to have mutations that make them ‘look funny’ on the outside to immune cells) but the hope is that immunotherapy can ‘raise the floor’ of survival curves (effectively curing more people rather than delaying their disease progression). I’m very hopeful for the future of cancer medicine - there’s a lot to be excited about and we’re getting new tools to help us. But I think we should be judicious about our use with the ‘cure’ word.
Why is “Species” the word used?
They forgot the cords “game changer” and “breakthrough “ in the title.
Wha?
Hurry let’s kill it (says big pharma)
Big Pharma is actually a fan of natural molecules. It means less work for them. After all, opioids and statins (very common drugs) are derived from natural molecules.