The vast majority of our oceans have not been explored, which means they could hold many surprises. A new study highlights how some of those surprises may be medicinal in nature.

Research recently published in the journal Glycobiology studied an unlikely ally in the fight against cancer: the sea cucumber. The Florida sea cucumber, specifically, has a sugar compound known as fucosylated chondroitin sulfate, or HfFucCS. It’s thought that this compound can help inhibit an enzyme called Heparan-6-O-endosulfatase 2, or Sulf-2, whose dysregulation is linked with cancer. When cancer affects Sulf-2’s expression, it impacts cell components called glycans that help with immune response, including recognizing pathogens. The researchers wanted to see how well HfFucCS could counteract this.

Marwa Farrag, the study’s first author and fourth-year doctoral candidate in the University of Mississippi Department of Biomolecular Sciences, explains, "Marine life produces compounds with unique structures that are often rare or not found in terrestrial vertebrates. And so, the sugar compounds in sea cucumbers are unique. They aren't commonly seen in other organisms. That's why they're worth studying."

Farrag’s work, which she did alongside other researchers from Ole Miss and Georgetown University, involved computer modeling and lab testing of HfFucCS and other sugar compounds. The findings showed that HfFucCS had the strongest inhibition of Sulf-2 among the compounds tested.

The researchers say other Sulf-2 inhibitors can cause issues with blood clotting, but this one doesn’t appear to do so.

Though further research is needed into this compound’s impact on Sulf-2 associated cancers, this could be an easier and cleaner way to extract carbohydrate drugs, which are currently taken from land animals in ways that could lead to virus transfer.

Joshua Sharp, UM associate professor of pharmacology, explains, "Some of these drugs we have been using for 100 years, but we're still isolating them from pigs because chemically synthesizing it would be very, very difficult and very expensive. That's why a natural source is really a preferred way to get at these carbohydrate-based drugs."

As harvesting large amounts of sea cucumbers isn’t practical, the ultimate goal would be to find a way to synthesize the compound. You can read the whole study here.

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