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Marine studies yield human health benefits by Dick Peterson Public Relations Ask Eric Lacy, Ph.D., why biomedical investigators from MUSC are studying the renal systems of stingrays in Charleston Harbor while patients with kidney failure in the university’s hospital are praying for a cure and he’ll be eager to tell you. In fact, as MUSC’s director of Marine Biomedicine and Environmental Sciences, he’ll tell you about oysters and shrimp and dolphins. And about micro-organisms that thrive in the absence of oxygen, about genes that function to resist viral and bacterial diseases and about marine life that survive under the incredible stressors of change from salt to fresh to salt water again, of heavy metal pollution and of extreme temperature changes. MUSC’s marine genome scientists gather at the front of the newly completed Hollings Marine Laboratory. Their laboratories and those of investigators from collaborating institutions will eventually occupy the new facility and offer tremendous potential for collaboration in marine research. Stingrays, for example, endure extreme salinity changes in their environment as tides ebb and flow. Despite twice-a-day salinity fluctuations that would shut down human renal systems, stingrays do quite well, a fact that intrigues medical researchers looking into the causes and cures of kidney disease. “We’re interested in how marine animals adapt to extremes in their environment,” Lacy said, explaining that the biological distance between marine life and human life really isn’t that big of a stretch.  Research scientists gathered from three state and two federal agencies will soon enter the Hollings Marine Laboratory to study marine animals. Joining MUSC at the newly opened Fort Johnson facility are scientists from the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources, the College of Charleston, the National Ocean Service, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology. “Nowhere in the country is there a facility like this that physically brings together from a wide variety of disciplines scientists who share common research interests,” Lacy said. The 40 faculty in the MUSC marine program are experts in eco-toxicology, bio-informatics, proteomics, and genomics. Together they lead in the field of marine research, besting even The Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego and Woods Hole Marine Oceanographic Institute on Cape Cod, Mass., for its level of collaboration among marine scientists and medical researchers. “There’s a powerful synergy here that makes this an attractive place for faculty, graduate students and post-docs to work,” he said. As a result, MUSC’s marine biomedical research has attracted grants from the US Department of Agriculture, the National Science Foundation and the Environmental Protection Agency, funding sources not commonly found among medical schools. Among the MUSC projects at the Hollings Marine Laboratory are studies into the genetic basis for immunity in oysters and shrimp. Researchers are discovering anti-microbial peptides that the oysters and shrimp produce to fight disease. The question they have is how will these anti-microbial peptides work against disease-producing microbes in humans. “We’ve always known that naturally produced anti-microbials are highly effective,” Lacy said, “But the trick is to find them. And that’s something these faculty and students are doing exceedingly well.” “And dolphins are great indicators of environmental health,” he said. MUSC researchers are studying the molecular and immune mechanisms of Charleston’s healthy and free dolphin population against a diseased and free population at Indian River, Fla. Their control group is a healthy captive population of dolphins at the San Diego Navy Base. These animals are raised and trained for military purposes and are under the care of veterinarians, Lacy said. As mammals, the ways dolphins deal with disease and pollution offer clues into human reactions under similar conditions.  “The Hollings Marine Laboratory gives us the opportunity to apply our research in areas outside the mammalian model, as is done on this campus,” Lacy said from his downtown office in the Basic Science Building. “If we want to study how the immune system works in humans, we can gain valuable insight in a much simpler system such as shrimp.”  The Hollings Marine Laboratory has the facilities—large fish tanks where researchers can conduct controlled toxicology studies of fish, shrimp and other ocean creatures, Lacy said. The facility allows studies into the effects of environmental stress, including contaminants on aquatic organisms under highly controlled conditions and accommodates studies with highly toxic compounds including those of biologic origins from algae and other microorganisms. When tissue samples of aquatic organisms are taken after experimentation, they no longer are transported back to MUSC for testing. Instead, they are analyzed at the Fort Johnson facility where scientific interaction is free to flourish. Nuclear magnetic resonance, structural chemistry for heavy metal analysis, satellite global information systems, and the environmental challenge rooms where the molecular response of organisms to environmental stress is tested are all part of the range of features housed there. Lacy describes the relationship among the five institutions at the Hollings Marine Laboratory as a “joint project agreement. It’s five institutions that are working in this building to reach common goals and pursue common research interests.”