Cancer is the second leading cause of death in the United States. The discovery then of new classes of drugs to address this constellation of diseases is critical to mitigating many presently untreatable conditions.
One approach to new drug discovery in this area is the systematic investigation of marine organisms. They are potential sources of unique, chemotherapeutically active drug structures.
Researchers at Arizona State University have successfully isolated glycosphingolipid compounds from the Asian topshell snail Turbo stenogyrus for the treatment of cancer. Denoted as turbostatin 1 through 4 (depicted below), these compounds exhibit significant growth inhibition of murine P388 lymphocytic leukemia and were found to be active in a panel of human cancer cell lines.
Potential Applications
- Anticancer treatment
Benefits and Advantages
- New compounds exhibit significant inhibition of cancer cell growth.
For more information about the inventor(s) and their research, please see
Dr. Pettit's departmental webpage