Narrator:       This is Science Today. Researchers at the University of California, San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography received a five million dollar award from the International Cooperative Biodiversity Groups to continue their search of exotic medicines in Panama. Scripps scientist Bill Gerwick says they're grateful to receive the funding to continue their search for exotic medicines off the Pacific coast island of Coiba.

Gerwick:        It's been really quite successful in discovering new lead compounds in cancer and tropical diseases like malaria, Leishmania, Chagas' disease, which has become the focus of our program in Panama.

Narrator:       Gerwick helped discover a potent anti-cancer compound in the sea, which they called coibamide.

Gerwick:        We collected some thin filaments grouped together - it looked like somebody's hair was waving off the sea floor, back and forth. And in fact it was purplish white in color and we made a collection of that and tested the extract of that material -the oily constituents from that tissue - and we found that it had amazing cancer cell toxicity associated with that extract. 

Narrator:       For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.