Imagine you're a designer, and you've created a species — humans — for whom you have a particular fondness. Only, something keeps going dreadfully wrong with your blueprint. A large number of them keep dying because their cells become cancerous when they fail to replicate properly, and these cancers then spread to other organs, which ultimately give up the ghost.
Now, you can’t quite work out why these cancers start. For some reason, you've included substances called glycans on the surfaces of cells, and — just to complicate things — you’ve made cancer cells produce an enzyme called Sulf-2, which alters these glycans to help the cancer spread. Your solution? A stroke of genius: create another enzyme that inhibits Sulf-2. And lo! It works.
So, who do you give this life-saving enzyme to?
If you're creationism’s supposedly super-intelligent designer, you don’t give it to your favourite species — the one made in your own image, no less. No, instead you bestow this miracle molecule upon… sea cucumbers. A species that, incidentally, doesn’t even have a problem with cancer.
This, if they actually understood the subject properly, is what Intelligent Design creationists consider compelling evidence of a supremely intelligent designer.
The discovery that sea cucumbers possess this enzyme was made by researchers at the University of Mississippi and Georgetown University in Washington, DC. Their findings are published in the journal Glycobiology and can be read here.
It’s also neatly summarised in a University of Mississippi news article:
What information do you have on glycans and their role in the spread of cancers in the body? Glycans—complex carbohydrates attached to proteins and lipids on cell surfaces—play a crucial role in many biological processes, including the development and spread (metastasis) of cancer. Here's a summary of their key roles in cancer biology:
- What Are Glycans?
Glycans are chains of sugar molecules (monosaccharides) that are:
- Covalently attached to proteins (forming glycoproteins) or lipids (forming glycolipids).
- Abundant on cell surfaces, forming the glycocalyx, a dense coating involved in cell–cell and cell–matrix interactions.
- Glycans in Normal Cells vs Cancer Cells
- In normal cells, glycosylation (the process of attaching glycans) is tightly regulated.
- In cancer cells, glycosylation becomes abnormal or dysregulated:
- This leads to altered glycan structures on the cell surface.
- These changes affect how cells interact with their environment, contributing to tumour growth, immune evasion, and metastasis.
- Key Roles of Glycans in Cancer Progression
a. Cell Adhesion and Detachment
- Abnormal glycans affect how tightly cells stick to each other and to the extracellular matrix.
- This helps cancer cells detach from the primary tumour and migrate through tissues.
b. Immune Evasion
- Tumour cells can display glycans that mask them from the immune system.
- For example, they may mimic "self" signals to avoid immune detection.
c. Signalling and Growth
- Glycans influence the function of receptors on the cell surface.
- Altered glycosylation can lead to continuous activation of growth signals.
d. Metastasis and Invasion
- Certain glycans promote the invasion of surrounding tissues and entry into the bloodstream.
- They also assist in anchoring cancer cells at distant sites.
- Sulfatases like Sulf-2
Sulf-2 (Sulfatase-2) is an enzyme that modifies heparan sulfate proteoglycans (HSPGs)-a type of glycan found on the cell surface.
- In normal function: Sulf-2 modulates signalling by altering HSPGs.
- In cancer: Sulf-2 can be overexpressed, leading to:
- Enhanced growth factor signalling.
- Increased angiogenesis (formation of blood vessels to feed tumours).
- Promotion of metastasis via glycan modification.
- Therapeutic Implications
- Researchers are investigating glycan-targeted therapies, including:
- Sulf-2 inhibitors, which may prevent cancer spread.
- Lectin-based drugs to bind and block specific glycans.
- Glycan biomarkers for cancer detection and prognosis.
Sea Cucumbers Could Hold Key to Stopping Cancer Spread
UM-led study explores how sea cucumber sugars could be used in cancer therapy.
Sea cucumbers are the ocean's janitors, cleaning the seabed and recycling nutrients back into the water. But this humble marine invertebrate could also hold the key to stopping the spread of cancer.
A sugar compound found in sea cucumbers can effectively block Sulf-2, an enzyme that plays a major role in cancer growth, according to a University of Mississippi-led study published in Glycobiology.
Marine life produces compounds with unique structures that are often rare or not found in terrestrial vertebrates. And so, the sugar compounds in sea cucumbers are unique. They aren't commonly seen in other organisms. That's why they're worth studying.
Marwa Farrag, lead author
Department of BioMolecular Sciences
University of Mississippi, Oxford Mississippi, USA.
Farrag, a native of Assiut, Egypt, and the study's lead author, worked with a team of researchers from Ole Miss and Georgetown University on the project.
Human cells, and those of most mammals, are covered in tiny, hairlike structures called glycans that help with cell communication, immune responses and the recognition of threats such as pathogens. Cancer cells alter the expression of certain enzymes, including Sulf-2, which in turn modifies the structure of glycans. This modification helps cancer spread.
The cells in our body are essentially covered in 'forests' of glycans, and enzymes change the function of this forest – essentially prunes the leaves of that forest. If we can inhibit that enzyme, theoretically, we are fighting against the spread of cancer.
Professor Vitor H. Pomin, corresponding author
Department of BioMolecular Sciences
University of Mississippi, Oxford, MS, USA.
Using both computer modeling and laboratory testing, the research team found that the sugar – fucosylated chondroitin sulfate – from the sea cucumber Holothuria floridana can effectively inhibit Sulf-2.
We were able to compare what we generated experimentally with what the simulation predicted, and they were consistent. That gives us more confidence in the results.
Professor Robert J. Doerksen, co-author
Department of BioMolecular Sciences
University of Mississippi, Oxford, MS, USA.
Unlike other Sulf-2 regulating medications, the sea cucumber compound does not interfere with blood clotting, said Joshua Sharp, UM associate professor of pharmacology.
As you can imagine, if you are treating a patient with a molecule that inhibits blood coagulation, then one of the adverse effects that can be pretty devastating is uncontrolled bleeding, so, it's very promising that this particular molecule that we're working with doesn't have that effect.
Professor Joshua S Sharpe, co-author
Department of BioMolecular Sciences
University of Mississippi, Oxford, MS, USA.
As a marine-based cancer therapy, the sea cucumber compound may be easier to create and safer to use.
Some of these drugs we have been using for 100 years, but we're still isolating them from pigs because chemically synthesizing it would be very, very difficult and very expensive. That's why a natural source is really a preferred way to get at these carbohydrate-based drugs.
Professor Joshua S Sharpe.
Unlike extracting carbohydrate-based drugs from pigs or other land mammals, extracting the compound from sea cucumbers does not carry a risk of transferring viruses and other harmful agents, Pomin said.
It's a more beneficial and cleaner resource. The marine environment has many advantages compared to more traditional sources.
Professor Vitor H. Pomin.
But sea cucumbers – some variants of which are a culinary delicacy in the Pacific Rim – aren't so readily abundant that scientists could go out and harvest enough to create a line of medication. The next step in the research is to find a way to synthesize the sugar compound for future testing.
One of the problems in developing this as a drug would be the low yield, because you can't get tons and tons of sea cucumbers, so, we have to have a chemical route, and when we've developed that, we can begin applying this to animal models.
Professor Vitor H. Pomin.
The interdisciplinary nature of the scientific study, which featured researchers from chemistry, pharmacognosy and computational biology, underscored the importance of cross-disciplinary collaboration in tackling complex diseases like cancer, Pomin said.This research took multiple expertise: mass spectrometry, biochemistry, enzyme inhibition, computation. It's the effort of the whole team.
Professor Vitor H. Pomin.
But creationists needn’t worry that their beloved deity is quite that inept because evolutionary theory offers a far more coherent explanation. The fact that one species happens to possess a solution to a problem faced by another is exactly the sort of thing we’d expect in a system driven by blind, undirected processes. There is no mechanism in evolution by which distantly related species share solutions—unlike the single, all-knowing designer imagined by creationists, who presumably has access to every genome at once.Abstract
Heparan-6-O-endosulfatase 2 (Sulf-2) is a proteoglycan enzyme that modifies sulfation of heparan sulfate proteoglycans. Dysregulation of Sulf-2 is associated with various pathological conditions, including cancer, which makes Sulf-2 a potential therapeutic target. Despite the key pathophysiological roles of Sulf-2, inhibitors remain insufficiently developed. In previous work, a fucosylated chondroitin sulfate from the sea cucumber Holothuria floridana (HfFucCS) exhibited potent Sulf-2 inhibition. This study investigates the structural basis of HfFucCS-mediated Sulf-2 inhibition, examines the binding profile of HfFucCS to Sulf-2, and explores the mode of inhibition. Additionally, a structurally diverse library of sulfated poly/oligosaccharides, including common glycosaminoglycans and unique marine sulfated glycans, was screened for Sulf-2 inhibition. Results from a high-throughput arylsulfatase assay and specific 6-O-desulfation assay have proved that HfFucCS is the most potent among the tested sulfated glycans, likely due to the presence of the unique 3,4-disulfated fucose structural motif. HfFucCS demonstrated non-competitive inhibition, and inhibitory analysis of its low-molecular-weight fragments suggests a minimum length of ~7.5 kDa for effective inhibition. Surface plasmon resonance analyses revealed that Sulf-2 binds to surface heparin with high affinity (KD of 0.817 nM). HfFucCS and its derivatives effectively disrupt this interaction. Results from mass spectrometry-hydroxyl radical protein footprinting and repulsive scaling replica exchange molecular dynamics indicate similarities in the binding of heparin and HfFucCS oligosaccharides to both the catalytic and hydrophilic domains of Sulf-2. These findings reveal the unique inhibitory properties of a structurally distinct marine glycosaminoglycan, supporting its further investigation as a selective and effective inhibitor for Sulf-2-associated cancer events.
Marwa Farrag, Reem Aljuhani, Julius Benicky, Hoda Al Ahmed, Sandeep K Misra, Sushil K Mishra, Joshua S Sharp, Robert J Doerksen, Radoslav Goldman, Vitor H Pomin
Heparan-6-O-endosulfatase 2, a cancer-related proteoglycan enzyme, is effectively inhibited by a specific sea cucumber fucosylated glycosaminoglycan Glycobiology, 35(6), June 2025, cwaf025. DOI: 10.1093/glycob/cwaf025
© 2025 The authors, Published by Oxford University Press.
Reprinted under the terms of s60 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Evolution, by contrast, proceeds without foresight or purpose, and without any awareness of what’s happening in another branch of the tree of life. It has taken the intelligence of modern scientists—not a designer—to discover that sea cucumbers, quite by chance, harbour a molecule that could help us fight one of humanity’s most persistent killers.
Or, to put it more bluntly, it has taken human intelligence to discover a possible solution to one of creationism's intelligent designers more serious blunders - cancers and how they spread in the body. Or is it by design that the designer allows humans to die of cancers when it has a partial solution to the problem its ineptitude caused?
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