Brussels, 11/06/2004 (Agence Europe) - The European Union has helped to fund a research project on the treatment of various malignant tumours, using small marine animals. European scientists are using chemical agents extracted from a type of Caribbean sea squirt, named Ecteinascidia turbinata, to treat some tumours. The results of this project are soon to be published in Marine Drugs journal. As part of the project "A novel marine pharmaceutical with unique mechanism of action for the treatment of cancer", trials have been carried out in 24 centres in seven countries of the European Union. The project, in which scientists from the Netherlands, Finland, France and Spain are taking part, aims to test the use of chemicals in the treatment of sarcomas, a rare tumour that kills about 3,900 Europeans every year. Although chemotherapy acts on sarcomas by reducing the size of the tumour, a cure has yet to be found. Used as a chemotherapeutic agent, the alkaloid Ecteinascidin-743 (ET-743) has shown promising results where other treatments had failed, and could open up new opportunities for the treatment of various cancers.