  | Red tides can mean death for marine life, but Pharmacy Professor Yuzuru Shimizu believes they may provide cancer cures for people. | ||||||||||
 Laura Nelson How does one make the leap from marine disaster to cancer cure? For Shimizu, it was a natural connection. As professor of biomedical sciences and director of the Drugs and the Sea program at URI, Shimizu has spent his career exploring the potential medicinal applications of both terrestrial and marine plants. "There was no leap to make the connection between red tides and anti-cancer drugs. Drugs are poison--the drugs used to kill cancer cells are poison. I was always aware that some of the compounds I was studying in red tides could be medicinal," says Shimizu. A world-renowned expert in marine organism research, Shimizu's 32-year career at URI almost didn't happen. He was an assistant professor of pharmaceutical sciences at Hokkaido University in Japan in 1968 when College of Pharmacy Dean Heber Youngken invited him to come to URI to direct the newly formed Drugs and the Sea program. The offer was attractive to Shimizu, but he was torn between what he knew was a great professional opportunity and the personal consequences of his decision. With a wife and a child on the way, he was loath to uproot his family. "I was in turmoil because I knew it was a big step to start a new program in a new country," says Shimizu. Despite his initial intention to start at URI in 1968, Shimizu's indecision kept him from accepting the job for a year. He finally arrived in Rhode Island in 1969, taking over the leadership (along with Professor Gary Carlson) of URI's fledgling Drugs and the Sea program and teaching courses in the College of Pharmacy. Shimizu began his research on red tides in 1972. His original mission was to identify the causes of red tides. Over time, however, he shifted his objective to identifying the marine organisms within red tides that are potential sources of anti-cancer drugs. His work has garnered the attention of the National Cancer Institute--he recently received his second five-year, $1-million grant to continue his promising work. Shimizu's red tide research is one of the longest continually running projects in the institute's history. Shimizu's research is part of the National Cooperative Natural Products Drug Discovery Group, a partnership between academia and the pharmaceutical industry aimed at finding new drugs. In his research, Shimizu collaborates with researchers at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography and the Bristol-Meyers Squibb Pharmaceutical Research Institute. He also works closely with URI's Graduate School of Oceanography. Shimizu primarily investigates the potential pharmaceutical uses of microalgae, which he says are a great source of interesting and unexplored chemical compounds. Microalgae are primitive, single-celled organisms that live in a variety of unique environments and have a high potential for producing novel chemical structures and potent biological activities. Since he began his work, Shimizu has gathered microalgae samples from around the world. Over the last 10 years, however, he has had his algae collecting restricted as more and more countries--particularly developing countries--have cracked down on U.S. research for fear of having their natural resources exploited and depleted for others' profit. Despite these restrictions, Shimizu has been able to continue to obtain all the samples he needs for his research. Today, he focuses primarily on obtaining samples from U.S. territories, including the Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, Guam, and those countries with whom the U.S. has clear agreements. To test for anti-cancer properties, Shimizu isolates the organisms from salt water and cultures them in quantity. He then extracts organic compounds from the culture and sends them to the Bristol-Myers Squibb lab to be applied to cancer cells. Those with promising characteristics are cultured in mass quantities for further testing and for isolation of the active constituents. Shimizu's innovative work has been recognized both in the URI community and beyond. In addition to the recent awarding of his second $1-million grant from the NCI, Shimizu was recently selected to become the first Omar-Youngken Distinguished Chair in Natural Product Chemistry. The distinguished professorship, endowed by Mostafa Omar, Ph.D. '82, was created to support faculty members who are doing nationally and internationally recognized work in pharmaceutical sciences. It is fitting that Shimizu is the first faculty member to fill the new Omar-Youngken Chair because it brings together two old acquaintances and two top researchers in the field of natural pharmaceutical sciences. Like Shimizu, Omar is internationally renowned for his research in the field of natural pharmaceuticals. He is also the founder and president of PhytoCeuticals, Inc., a company that consults, evaluates, tests, and develops products for the pharmaceutical and cosmetic industries. Shimizu has known Omar since he was a doctoral student at the College of Pharmacy in the late 1970s and early 1980s. With the new grant money, Shimizu intends to cut back on his teaching to focus more on his research into red tide organisms (he has hired a new professor from Scripps to take over some of his teaching duties). He is also planning to enhance URI's Medicinal Plant Garden, of which he is the director. Shimizu is rightly proud of the garden at the College of Pharmacy, which was established in 1958 and was later dedicated to his mentor and friend, Dean Emeritus Heber W. Youngken Jr. According to Shimizu, "We have one of the best collection of plants anywhere." He intends to keep it that way and to add some exotic plants in the year to come. u |
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