From Sea to Science: Coral Aquaculture for Sustainable Anticancer Drug Development

Marine natural products offer immense potential for drug development, but the limited supply of marine organisms poses a significant challenge. Establishing aquaculture presents a sustainable solution for this challenge by facilitating the mass production of active ingredients while reducing our reliance on wild populations and harm to local environments. To fully utilize aquaculture as a source of biologically active products, a cell-free system was established to target molecular components with protein-modulating activity, including topoisomerase II, HDAC, and tubulin polymerization, using extracts from aquaculture corals. Subsequent in vitro studies were performed, including MTT assays, flow cytometry, confocal microscopy, and Western blotting, along with in vivo xenograft models, to verify the efficacy of the active extracts and further elucidate their cytotoxic mechanisms. Regulatory proteins were clarified using NGS and gene modification techniques. Molecular docking and SwissADME assays were performed to evaluate the drug-likeness and pharmacokinetic and medicinal chemistry-related properties of the small molecules. The extract from Lobophytum crassum (LCE) demonstrated potent broad-spectrum activity, exhibiting significant inhibition of tubulin polymerization, and showed low IC₅₀ values against prostate cancer cells. Flow cytometry and Western blotting assays revealed that LCE induced apoptosis, as evidenced by the increased expression of apoptotic protein-cleaved caspase-3 and the populations of early and late apoptotic cells. In the xenograft tumor experiments, LCE significantly suppressed tumor growth and reduced the tumor volume (PC3: 43.9%; Du145: 49.2%) and weight (PC3: 48.8%; Du145: 7.8%). Additionally, LCE inhibited prostate cancer cell migration, and invasion upregulated the epithelial marker E-cadherin and suppressed EMT-related proteins. Furthermore, LCE effectively attenuated TGF-β-induced EMT in PC3 and Du145 cells. Bioactivity-guided fractionation and SwissADME validation confirmed that LCE’s main component, 13-acetoxysarcocrassolide (13-AC), holds greater potential for the development of anticancer drugs.