The Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences (BIOS) has been given a grant of $3 million to help fund research into cancer and ageing.The funds will go towards the International Centre for Ocean and Human Health at BIOS.The centre is researching sea urchins, which can live for more than 200 years without showing signs of ageing.The spiny sea creatures have also shown an extremely high resistance to cancer-causing agents.The intention of the study is to learn how the creatures resist such DNA damaging agents, and then apply this knowledge to human cells in an effort to reduce the effects of cancer and ageing-related diseases.The animals have been at the heart of ageing research for more than a century, and have been key to the discovery of proteins used in the control of cell division, helping scientists to understand the progression of cancer.BIOS director Tony Knap said: “Sea urchins don’t get cancer, and they don’t seem to age the way humans do.“We are looking at them as a model and comparing them to ourselves, and from that we hope to learn more about cancer and ageing.”Dr Knap said the anonymous grant is the largest single donation ever received by the institute.“We are very happy about it,” he said. “It is a restricted grant, so it will go entirely to this research. We can’t use it to pay our light bills or anything like that.”The research has also received funding from the US National Institutes for Health, the first such grant that institute has given BIOS.