New Anticancer Drugs from Cultured and Collected Marine Organisms

This paper provides an outline of a collaborative research project between researchers at the University of California, San Diego, University of Rhode Island, and the Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharmaceutical Research Institute, with participating members from the Developmental Therapeutics Branch of the National Cancer Institute. The program, formally funded by the National Cancer Institute under the National Cooperative Drug Discovery Groups (NCDDG) program, seeks to discover new anticancer drugs from marine organisms, in particular invertebrates such as sponges and ascidians, and marine microalgae, marine bacteria and fungi. In this report, the program and results obtained since its beginning in 2000 will be summarized.