By Paul Sisco
Washington, DC
28 July 2006
 
watch Medical Secrets report 

Submersible in search for rare plant and animals in the deep
   
  
Oceanographers using deep water submersibles believe they are rapidly getting closer to creating drugs that can greatly reduce the pain and suffering of terminally ill patients. 

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Deep-sea researchers are finding scores of unidentified plants and animals they believe can lead to cures for cancer, AIDS and other complex medical conditions.

Amy Wright is a marine medical researcher in Florida. She's looking for a particular sponge just 25 kilometers off the Florida coast. It's pitch black, and there's the sponge she's after!

Medical secrets of the sea
   
  
Amy Wright explains how the sponges can be used. “These sponges, and actually all sponges, don't have the ability to move so that they need to find ways to defend themselves. So they use chemicals to do much of that. So then we can use those same compounds but, for example, to try and kill cancer cells." 

 
Amy Wright 
  
The sponge is picked apart and analyzed at the lab.  Scientists here believe they are close to isolating a certain compound that attacks a protein found in some cancer cells. "Nothing else can do that, and that  would be really great way to treat cancer," Ms. Wright adds.

Prialt is a powerful painkiller that comes from a snail, plucked from the ocean bottom.  Ocean scientists and medical researchers say there are more mysteries to unravel in the deep sea that could one day revolutionize the treatment of many diseases.