Bermuda seems remote from the world of ground-breaking medical research, and yet the cure for cancer might lay right here in our own waters.

Canadian Dr. Andrea Bodnar, an associate research scientist at the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences (BIOS) is studying local sea urchins in an attempt to unlock some of the mysteries of ageing and disease.

Sea urchins are useful to scientists because their life cycle has been thoroughly studied, and the sea urchin genome has been sequenced.

"We have learned a lot studying sea urchins," said Dr. Bodnar. "They are beautiful models to work with in the early stages of development.

"Initially, the project I wanted to do was look at the expression of cancer-specific genes during development using sea urchins as a model system.

"What I found was contrary to what I expected to find and that set me off in a new direction for this project, which is to establish sea urchins as a useful model to explain ageing."

Dr. Bodnar is particularly interested in them because some species of sea urchins, such as the red sea urchin of the Pacific, are virtually immortal living up to 200 years or longer, while other species live only for a short time, four or five years.

Even more important, sea urchins do not get cancer or tumours unlike many other sea creatures.

She is working with the short-lived purple sea urchin, commonly found in Bermuda's waters.

At first, the thinking was that the purple sea urchin must not have whatever it was that caused the "immortal" red sea urchin to live so long.

Dr. Bodnar first read about the red sea urchin while listening in the BBC news.

"The article from the BBC was suggesting that this creature might be immortal and doesn't age," said Dr. Bodnar.

She contacted the scientists mentioned in the BBC story, and she is now working collaboratively with them.

"The first question we need to address is whether it does show any signs of ageing, by looking at changes in gene expression between the young and the old of each of those species," she said.

"The red sea urchin is really quite remarkable. It appears to live for hundreds of years in a very healthy state.

There is no evidence of age-related pathology and there are no reported cases of cancer.

There are in fact very few reported cases of cancer in any species of sea urchin. It is remarkable that a species that lives so long doesn't have it."

She said the shorter-lived purple sea urchin does not die from cancer either, but from environmental stress, temperature changes, predation or from bacterial infections.

"To be honest, I think there are probably genetic factors that determine their life span, their metabolic rate and their reproductive cycles," said Dr. Bodnar. "In the same way that ageing in humans and other organisms is a combination of genetic factors and environmental factors, I think it is probably the same for all species."

She said there are a number of species that can live for a long time, but it is difficult to study them.

Sea urchins are not an endangered species in Bermuda waters. And Dr. Bodnar only needs a small amount of material to study them.

"We have done experiments to try and identify long-lived species in Bermuda," she said. "There would be a lot of differences from a species that lives in the Atlantic and the Pacific.

"If you can find a long-lived and short-lived species that both live in the same place then that is a wonderful model system.

"The rock urchin of Bermuda is suspected to be a long-lived species. We have done some preliminary studies to confirm that. We don't have all of the data yet.

"It has probably been about two and a half years that we have been doing this. It is still in its infancy."

Her study looks at telomeres, which are repetitive sequences of DNA that are found at the end of all eukaryotic chromosomes.

Telomeres play an important role in normal growth and ageing. In most creatures, every time a cell divides a little bit breaks off, therefore, the amount of telomeres can define a cell's life span."

Originally, it was thought that in short-lived sea urchins this telomere breaking off occurs, and in long-lived species it does not occur.

But Dr. Bodnar found, to her surprise, that this telomere breaking off did not happen in either species of sea urchin.

Therefore, something else had to be controlling the ageing process in sea urchins.

She felt that this might hold the key to better understanding ageing in humans.

"I am a molecular and cell biologist," she said. "I have always worked in human medicine. I used to work for a major pharmaceutical company in New Jersey.

"For the most part my career has been in different aspects of human cancer. That is where my expertise is.

"Naturally, this is one of the pathways that I wanted to continue working on, but a totally different system."

In scientific circles, it is commonly thought that our whole purpose for being is to propagate the species.

"Once you have passed reproductive age there is no reason to maintain our bodies and that is why we age," she said. "Ageing is defined as a gradual decline in our defences and our repair mechanisms."

Human life spans have been increasing throughout human history. In 1900, you could expect to live to be around 45.

Now the average life span is about 79 years old. In the past, people tended to die of infectious diseases; now, with improved medical care, it is more common to die from things like heart disease and cancer.

"That is a remarkable change," she said. "With the discoveries of antibiotics and other medicines we have been able to live to a longer age.

"Now we are seeing a shift to age-related pathologies. We are facing a global ageing phenomenon.

"Right now in many developed countries there are more older people than younger people. The mortality rates have decreased. We are living longer.

"This is a problem not only in developed countries, but also in developing countries. It is going to cause a lot of social and economic problems.

"It means when these older people withdraw from the workforce, and also succumb to age-related diseases, it puts a huge burden on the small younger population to sustain quality of life for the elderly.

In developing countries, this phenomenon has been happening more recently, but more rapidly. So it is a global problem, not just a problem in developed countries.

"So there is a lot of research going on to try to understand ageing," she said. "Our objectives are to try and understand age-related diseases.

"If we could live our life span in a healthy manner it would take a lot of the burden off the economic factors."

Scientists are particularly interested in humans who live to be a 100 years old or older.

"They are looking at what causes them to have such a long life. There is a particularly high percentage of centenarians in France.

"Some people think this reflects diet or genetics, but no one is exactly sure.

"Everyone would like to find the cure for cancer," she said. "But cancer is incredibly complex. My goal is just to make some contribution. I want to help people to remain healthy throughout their life span."

The sea urchin project at BIOS is always in need of funding. They are currently being helped by the Ray Moore endowment, the Canadian Association for BIOS and the Duperreault Ocean Genomics Fund.

If you would like to help with cancer research right here in Bermuda, contact BIOS for more information.