New grant will help develop anti-cancer properties of Aleutian sponge

It started with a sponge collected from the deep ocean off the coast of the Aleutian Islands. And it may be our most powerful ally in the fight against pancreatic cancer.

Renowned natural products researcher Mark Hamann has been screening marine organisms for more than 25 years and has never seen a more potent and selective inhibitor of PANC-1.

The National Institutes of Health seems to agree. Hamann has just received a 4-year NIH/NCI RO1 award for his project “Synthesis and Optimization of the Aleutianamine Class of Alkaloids.” This $2.1 million award began on September 1 and runs through June 30, 2026.

This Latrunculia austini sponge is green, about the size of a golf ball, and pitted with craters and holes. It hardly stands out among the scientific marvels of the Aleutian isles, where researchers study the rarest of large whales, the North Pacific right whale, or marine birds like the puffin or the Aleutian cackling goose.

But this sponge houses potential treasure. The research is to develop synthesis methodologies for the sponge's remarkable molecule called aleutianamine, a product of the extreme conditions of deep ocean environments where cold temperatures, high pressure, and anoxic conditions provide a unique environment for the biosynthesis of highly unusual molecules.

Hamann, the college’s Charles and Carol Cooper Endowed Chair in Pharmacy and SmartState Endowed Chair in Drug Discovery, joined MUSC in 2018. Hamann’s discoveries have led to a number of advances in science, including drug leads for the control of drug resistant infectious diseases that promises to lead to the development of better treatments for MRSA, VRSA, VRE and other infectious diseases. His discoveries have also produced drug leads for certain types of cancer including recent research with karlotoxins that could lead to the development of potential drug leads for lung cancer and leukemia.