Sea Secrets Lecture Series Esther Guzmán, Ph.D.

This lecture will have a complimentary reception at SALT Waterfront Restaurant on the Rosenstiel Campus, beginning at 6:30 p.m. The lecture will begin promptly at 7:00 p.m. in the Rosenstiel auditorium. Seating is first come, first served as space is limited.

All lectures are also being offered virtually via Zoom. at 7:00 p.m. on the day of the lecture to watch.

Lecture title: Discovery of Anti-Cancer Drugs from the Sea

The oceans are a rich source of bioactive natural products. Natural products, or secondary metabolites, are small molecules made by organisms which are not essential to sustain life, but presumably confer an evolutionary advantage to the organism that makes it. Over 62% of drugs can be traced back to natural products. This lecture will focus on the cancer biology side of Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute’s drug discovery program. The Cell Biology Group focuses on finding compounds with utility against cancer, the second leading cause of death in the U.S. Marine natural products represent a wealth of potential treatments against cancer, and this talk will highlight recent discovery efforts to identify potential novel treatments for different types of cancer including lung, colon, pancreatic and triple negative breast cancer.

Dr. Esther Guzmán received her B.S. in Molecular Biology/Biotechnology from Salem-Teikyo University and her Ph.D. in Biomedical Sciences with emphasis in Immunology from the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. She leads the Cancer Cell Biology Program at Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute (HBOI) at Florida Atlantic University. For the last two decades, she has been focused on finding marine natural products that have the potential to be novel therapeutics against the over a hundred diseases grouped under the term cancer. These include using marine natural products to prevent cancer formation, decrease inflammation, eliminate existing tumors, reactivate the immune system to fight cancers, stop tumors from spreading to other organs (metastasis) or use as tools to further our understanding of cancer.

Host or Publisher University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science