A Tongan chemist and researcher, Taitusi Taufa  has been honoured by Victoria University in New Zealand for the exceptional quality of his doctoral research that has explored properties of marine life in Tonga.

New Doctor of Philosphy in Chemistry, Taufa was included in the “Dean’s List” award for his thesis and research into the medicinal properties of marine sponges collected from Tonga’s seabed.

Victoria University's Faculty of Graduate Reserach stated that the Dean’s List acknowledges doctoral graduates whose theses have been judged to be of exceptional quality and whose work makes an outstanding contribution to their field of research. The Dean's list recipients are announced twice each year before the May and December graduation ceremonies.

"Happy is an understatement for the way I feel”, said Taufa. “I knew it wasn’t going to be an easy undertaking from the beginning, but it was a journey I was willing to take."

 Taufa stated that his thesis was inspired by traditional Tongan medicine that his family used when he was growing up in Tonga.

"As a child, my grandparents and mother often used plants and herbal remedies to treat us when we were sick. These traditional medicines always seemed to work, which prompted my curiosity about the chemical contents responsible for the healing process,”

"When I did my undergraduate studies in Chemistry, I realized that many drugs used nowadays, such as aspirin and morphine, were either based on, or inspired by, traditional medicine."

Marine sponges

Taufa and two colleagues travelled to Tonga where they collected marine sponges from dives around Tonga.

Taufa stated that his research revealed that Tongan marine sponges possessed unique chemicals that could help develop future anti-cancer drugs. He said that the chemical properties resulted from the organism’s adaption to its environment.

"Because sponges can’t move and lack physical defenses such as spines or protective shells, they are highly vulnerable to predators such as fish, turtles, and invertebrates. It’s not surprising then that sponges have developed a wide suite of defensive chemicals to deter predators. These chemical compounds can be isolated, identified and utilized for medicinal applications,”

"Through my research I isolated several new natural products with unique and interesting anti-cancer properties, which could help us in the future to synthesize and design new anti-cancer drugs.”

Taufa expressed his facisnation with ‘Eua, noting it’s unique marine environment.

" ‘Eua is the most ancient island in Tonga and is geologically unrelated to the rest of the islands. It’s believed to be more than 30 million years old-one of the oldest islands in the South Pacific. Because of this, ‘Eua has a unique marine environment that can host organisms that produce interesting and novel chemistry”, he said.