MERSIN, Türkiye

A Turkish scientist has said sea creatures called ascidians or sea squirts, a group of primitive vertebrates, might help treat cancer.

“We will announce the newly identified metabolites in a two-year period and we think that some of them can be used as antibiotics, or for anticancer or anti-aging treatment,” Dr. Arzu Karahan of Ankara-based Middle East Technical University's Institute of Marine Sciences, told Anadolu.

Karahan and her team have been working since 2017 on ascidians, primitive marine vertebrates, that are ageless and self-repairing.

After their work at eight different stations in Turkiye’s southern provinces of Antalya, Mersin and Hatay, Karahan and her team aim to obtain pharmaceutical raw materials that can be used in many areas from cancer treatment to anti-aging.

Noting that only a limited number of institutes work on the genre in the world, and that they are the only ones working in this field for the first time in Türkiye, Karahan said: “Due to the increasing antibiotic resistance and cancer cases in the world, the search for metabolites, which we call new pharmaceutical raw materials, has been started.”

“Seas cover 71% of the world, and 50 to 80% of the total biodiversity is found in the seas,” she said.

Pointing out that many sectors and universities in the world have turned to the seas for their discoveries, she said: “We study different stages of whole body repair in these creatures with other institutes around the world. Anti-aging studies continue in the same way.”

“We started working on these creatures as the results of the studies carried out so far were that they did not show signs of aging,” she added.

Expressing that the substances produced by these creatures in their bodies and their life cycles are very interesting, Karahan said: “Every week their whole body is renewed, so there is no aging and they are doing whole body repair from blood cells.”

“They do not age as we know it,” she said. “They die because of an aging we call 'stem cell aging'.”

Karahan said that they identified eight species from the ascidians group on the Mediterranean coast in terms of biodiversity by DNA barcoding method, one of them is a new species and the other one has the potential to become a new species.

Noting that it would be very ambitious to say that the creatures in question would be a cure for cancer, Karahan said: “But the discovery of some metabolites that will be used for certain types (cancer treatment) or those that will enable the person to live comfortably will be an important step.”