Romo and Johns Hopkins Colleagues Studying Potential Anti-Cancer Agent

Pateamine A (PatA), a natural product first isolated from marine sponges, has attracted considerable attention as a potential anti-cancer agent, and now a new activity has been found for it, which may reveal yet another anti-cancer mechanism. That’s the assessment of Daniel Romo, a Texas A&M chemistry professor, and his colleagues at Johns Hopkins University who are pioneers in research involving this novel marine natural product.

Messenger RNA (mRNA), as its name indicates, copies messages from genes on DNA and uses these messages to produce proteins, and the human body functions well only with the right types and amount of proteins. So, what happens when mRNA gets damaged? Will the wrong proteins produced by the wrong messages carried by mRNA damage a person’s body?

Don’t worry – it’s under surveillance, and PatA has been found to inhibit one such surveillance mechanism called NMD, Romo says.

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