Sea Sponge Chemical Fixes Cystic Fibrosis Defect, McGill University Study

A chemical from a marine sponge found in the South Pacific Ocean restores function in a defective protein that causes cystic fibrosis, a fatal genetic disease. “We identified and isolated in sea sponges a compound called latonduine and developed a method to determine its site of action,” says David Thomas, chair of the department of biochemistry at McGill University and Canada Research Chair in Molecular Genetics. The team examined 720 marine extracts from South Pacific sponges to identify latonduine as the active molecule.