Research: Extract from red sea coral can treat skin cancer

Research for combating cancer goes off into many different paths - one area is to determine the genes that kick off the cancer cells, or provide an indication of whether there is a higher risk of cancer; another area is to find naturally occurring ingredients that can either decrease the chance of getting cancer, or reduce / stop the incidence of cance once a person has been afflicted with the cancer. As a part of this, researchers have found an extract from coral found in the red sea that acts against skin cancer (link to article):

The team led by SDSU distinguished professor Chandradhar Dwivedi looked at the chemo
preventive effects of sarcophine-diol, made from a substance called sarcophine that can be isolated from soft coral found in the Red Sea. They found that sarcophine-diol has the potential to inhibit cell growth of cancers, and induce orderly, programmed cell death of skin cancer cells.
The study showed that treating human skin cancer cells with different concentrations of sarcophine-diol for different lengths of time reduced the viability of cancer cells in each case. Sarcophine-diol also inhibited the proliferation or uncontrolled growth of cancer cells. It also induced apoptosis, or programmed cell death, in cancer cells.

Further research is required in this area, but this a postive trend in the cure against skin cancer.