Seawater bacteria provide clues to fight melanoma

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Seawater bacteria provide clues to fight melanoma

Malignant melanoma can be a particularly dangerous form of cancer, and other treatment options are needed. Today, researchers report in letters from the ACS Medicinal Chemistry Letters that a seawater bacterium has inspired promising leads for a whole new way to treat this disease.

In melanoma, cancer cells are formed in melanocytes, the cells that color the skin. While new cases of most types of cancer are decreasing, melanoma - the most deadly form of skin cancer - continues to increase, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. If melanoma metastases or migrates to other parts of the body, the prognosis is poor and treatment options are limited. New chemotherapeutic agents have recently been approved to target melanomas with so-called "BRAF" mutations, but some of these tumours already have resistance to these treatments. William Fenical, James J. La Clair, Leticia Costa-Lotufo and their colleagues decided that the best solution would be to aim for a completely different biochemical pathway for melanoma.

In 2014, researchers discovered that seroquinone, a natural product isolated from a rare marine bacterium, had a powerful and selective activity against melanoma cells in a test tube. Better yet, it was the first small molecule to target a specific protein involved in cancer proliferation. In their new work, the team identified the structural components of the natural product that were essential to its activity, and then modified other parts of the molecule to make it more water-soluble and easier to purify. These two steps are necessary to make it more appropriate as a drug. Researchers are currently refining these seroquinone derivatives to optimize melanoma activity.