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San Diego Researchers Say Mud Could Treat Diseases Like Cancer

People have used mud baths and facials for years. Now San Diego researchers say mud could treat diseases such as cancer. KPBS reporter Ed Joyce has details.

San Diego Researchers Say Mud Could Treat Diseases Like Cancer

Photo: Scripps Researchers Bradley Moore (L) and Daniel Udwary (Rt). Scripps Institution of Oceanography .

People have used mud baths and facials for years. Now San Diego researchers say mud could treat diseases such as cancer. KPBS reporter Ed Joyce has details.

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Scripps Institution of Oceanography researchers discovered something in mud from the Bahamas that has the potential to fight diseases.

Scripps scientist Daniel Udwary is part of the team that figured out how a bacteria that lives in the mud produces natural antibiotics and anticancer products.

Udwary : We're finding that the ocean is a new source of antibiotics because similar bacterium that we've always used to find antibiotics also live in the ocean. And there's a lot more ocean sediment out there then I guess land sediment.

More than half of the natural antibiotics used now come from land-based organisms. The mud under the sea could now be another source.

Scripps researchers first discovered the bacterium in 1991 off the Bahamas. But Udwary says genetic research unlocked the anti-cancer potential.

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Udwary : It wasn't until we had the opportunity to sequence the entire genome that we found that there was even more to this organism than we thought was going to be the case. So it's a far richer source of potential drugs than we were expecting.

The mud has shown promising signs for treating various cancers. A San Diego pharmaceutical company is now using a product from the mud to treat patients that have a form of bone marrow cancer. The testing shows promising signs that could lead to a new medicine in the battle against cancer.

Ed Joyce, KPBS News.