biosyn’s Keyhole Limpet shares its story

My name is Megathura crenulata and I live in the cold coastal waters of Southern California’s and Baja Mexico’s Pacific rim. I am a marine mollusk that gives of itself to beat cancer. Every now and then, divers swim by my habitat to collect me and my comrades for our work in the fight against cancer. They gently take us to the biosyn labs where we are kept in cooled metal basins. As a gastropod, what flows through my veins is not mammalian blood, but hemolymph. The scientists in the lab extract this from my single foot to make immunocyanin, a powerful vaccine instilled in the bladder for cancer recurrence.

Once I have recovered, the divers bring me back to my home in the rocky reefs where I continue eating my diet of red and brown algae and other microscopic ocean creatures. I am a sea snail and my hemolymph helps beat bladder cancer and potentially other types too.

To read other stories of individuals touched by cancer, go to:

  1. cancer prevention
  2. immune system
  3. vaccines
  4. cancer recurrence
  5. World Cancer Day