Scientists recently discovered that a cyanobacteria, collected off the coast of Papua New Guinea, produces a compound with a structure that has never before been seen in biomedicine. Researchers from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego and their colleagues at Creighton University have decoded the highly unusual molecular structure of the ocean-based compound, dubbed Hoiamide A, and suggest that it may offer insight into the function of mammalian nerve cells, and offer a unique template for drug development.

"We have seen some of hoiamide A's features in other molecules, but separately," said Alban Pereira, a postdoctoral researcher in Scripps' CMBB and a paper coauthor. "We believe this new template may be important because it's showing different mechanisms of action—different ways to interact with neurons, possibly with a good therapeutic effect for such diseases as epilepsy, hypoxia-ischemia and several neurodegenerative disorders."

Members of the team at Creighton University performed pharmacological tests that show Hoiamide A interacts with the same therapeutic targets as analgesic, antiarrhythmic, antiepileptic and neuroprotective drugs.

"Classically, what we know about the workings of the human nervous system has come largely from studies of different toxins on the function of model systems, such as in this case, the action of hoiamide A on nerve cells in petri dish cultures," said William Gerwick, professor of oceanography and pharmaceutical sciences at Scripps. "The toxins serve as 'molecular tools' for manipulating cells at an extremely microscopic scale. Ultimately, by understanding how neurons work at this detailed level, and having a set of tools such as hoiamide A, we can envision the development of new, more effective treatments for such diverse conditions as epilepsy, pain control and memory and cognition enhancement. The natural world still has many valuable molecules left for us to discover and hopefully develop into new classes of medicines."

The findings are reported in the Aug. 27 online version of the journal Chemistry & Biology:

http://www.cell.com/chemistry-biology/abstract/S1074-5521(09)00212-9

Source: http://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/