Cancer drug finds HIV hidden in the body_美文_双语阅读-查字典英语网

Cancer drug finds HIV hidden in the body

CHRISTOPHER CRUISE: David Newman directs the Natural Products Branch of America’s National Cancer Institute. After years of collecting organisms on land, his team now collects only sea life, including sponges and corals. Because these organisms cannot move, he says, they depend on chemical warfare.

DAVID NEWMAN: “I have been known to say that weapons of mass destruction are alive and well on a coral reef, if you happen to be a fellow sponge who’s trying to encroach on someone’s territory or you’re a starfish that’s trying to eat the sponge. These are extremely toxic agents because of the dilution effect of seawater.”

Such strong chemicals are inviting to any group that is looking for ways to kill cancer cells. Far below coral reefs lie what could be an even more promising source of new medicines: mud. Close to seventy percent of the surface of the earth is really deep, ocean mud says William Fenical. He directs the Center for Marine Biotechnology and Biomedicine at the Scripps Institute for Oceanography in California. His team looks for microorganisms living on the sea floor.

WILLIAM FENICAL: “For the last fifty years, microorganisms that occur on land have been exploited for the production of antibiotics, cancer drugs, and cholesterol-lowering drugs. What we believe is that the ocean is a completely new resource for such microbial product.”