A customer recently reached out about a media story SUGAR THAT FIGHTS CANCER - Scientists found a “marine sugar triggering cancer cells to self-destruct.”
It sounds dramatic — breakthrough — to good to be true - and the headlines certainly leaned into the shock factor. And it is both:
- too good to be true, but also
- technically correct.
But the real science behind the story is far more interesting than the clickbait.
And it opens a window into a part of biology that we almost never talk about —
the molecular “language” shared between the ocean and our own bodies.
Let’s decode it ......
What really happened?
They decoded a signal - a bit like Turing did in WWII.
These researchers studied a complex sulfated sugar made by a deep-sea bacterium.
In a petri dish, they found this sugar sending a message to cancer cells — a message that triggered a fiery form of programmed cell death.
Not a cure. Not a treatment.
Just a signal between a complex sugar and a cancer cell — a molecular message — picked up in the controlled world of early-stage research.
But here’s the fascinating part:
**It wasn’t the sugar backbone that sent the message.
It was the sulfated "biological Wifi" signals along the backbone of the sugar — and this is where the story becomes truly magical.
The Language of the Life in the Oceans is coded by sulfur
Long before life walked onto land, the oceans were overflowing with sulfate — one of the most abundant and stable molecules in seawater. In fact, after the chlorine in SeaSalt, sulfure is THE MOST ABUNDANT MOLECULE.
Life evolved inside those sulfate-rich waters.
Organisms learned to build complex sugars decorated with negatively charged sulfate patterns — tiny tetrahedral “force shapes” that act like keys, unlocking communication pathways in cells.
These sulfated sugars are literally - 3D electricity - or the wireless signals of early life:
-
guiding cells
-
shaping tissues
-
modulating immunity
-
turning growth on or off
-
even sending danger signals
They function like biological WiFi — long-range communication without physical contact.
And here’s the twist:
Animals kept this ocean language. Plants did not.
Plants rely mostly on different molecules (like pectins and phosphorylated sugars), because land soils never had the sulfur abundance of the sea.
But we — humans, fish, mammals — still speak the ocean’s glycan language.
Our own bodies make sulfated sugars every day to build:
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heparan sulfate
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dermatan sulfate
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chondroitin sulfate
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keratan sulfate
These control everything from tissue repair and immune response to hydration and cellular communication, even the coding or our existence because it is the code that connects the sperm to an egg.
They are ancient messages encoded in 3D electricity.
Why the deep-sea discovery actually matters
When scientists saw that a marine sulfated glycan triggered cancer cell “self-destruction,” they weren’t discovering a cure.
They were overhearing an ancient message —
a code that marine organisms and animal cells can still interpret.
It’s not unique to that sugar.
Seaweeds like Ulva, kelps, and other algae also make sulfated glycans that interact with:
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immune cells
-
gut microbes
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skin cells
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inflammatory pathways
-
repair systems
In our work with SXRG84, we see similar things:
-
immune cells respond
-
gut bacteria recognise it
-
skin cells interact with it directly
Not because it’s a drug…
but because our biology still recognises the ocean’s molecular language.
The deep-sea study didn’t reveal a weapon.
It revealed a conversation.
And it’s about rediscovering that these molecules:
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shape our tissues
-
hydrate our skin
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regulate inflammation
-
curate our microbiome
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help our bodies repair
…all through the “3D negative charge patterns” that evolution wrote into us.
This is the story of a message carried from ancient oceans into our bodies,
still speaking today.
We evolved with it.
We still respond to it.
And seaweeds — the plants of the sea — carry the vocabulary.**
This is why our work with green seaweed glycans is so exciting.
Not because we promise miracles.
But because we are listening to one of the oldest communication systems in biology —
We are on a mission to learn how to reconnect human health with the molecular wisdom of the ocean.