The team carrying out the investigation, The Fourni Underwater Survey, previously found 22 wrecks in the same area, bringing the total number of finds in a nine month period to 45.

The project, an exciting joint Greek-American venture, is exploring the coastline of a group of islands east of mainland Greece which may contain one of the largest concentrations of ancient shipwrecks in the world, hidden beneath the waves.

Peter Campbell, of the University of Southampton and the US based RPM Nautical Foundation says: “The concentration of the shipwrecks and the large area remaining to be explored leaves every indication that there are many more sites to discover. We expect more seasons like these first two. The data we have recorded offers great insight into ancient navigation and trade.”

The research is also co-directed by George Koutsouflakis from the Ephorate of Underwater Antiquities (EUA) of the Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports and is funded by the Honor Frost Foundation and Deep Blue Explorers.*

The latest survey was conducted during June and early July 2016, following a previous investigation in September 2015. The goal of both was to identify and document ancient, Medieval, and post-Medieval shipwrecks in the archipelago.

The most significant shipwrecks of the latest survey are a Late Archaic-early Classical wreck with amphorae (large jug like container) from the eastern Aegean, a Hellenistic cargo of amphoras from Kos, three Roman cargos of Sinopean amphorae, a wreck of North African amphorae of the 3rd — 4th century AD, and a cargo of Late Roman tableware.

The ships span the late Archaic Period (c. 525-480 BC) to the Early Modern Period (c. 1750-1850). Beside shipwrecks, the project documented a large number of other discoveries, such as jettisoned pottery and ancient anchors. Among these are two massive stone-stocks of ancient anchors dating to the Archaic Period — the largest found in the Aegean so far.

The finds reveal the importance of eastern Mediterranean trade networks passing by Fourni in every time period, connecting the Black Sea and Aegean to Cyprus, the Levant, and Egypt. Some shipwrecks even carried goods from North Africa, Spain, and Italy.

The success of the project is attributable to working with the local community. The research consists primarily of scuba diving along the coastline to depths of up to 65 meters. It has covered less than 50 per cent of the archipelago’s coastline with diver surveys, leaving many regions, especially deep-water areas, still to explore.

Peter Campbell comments: “For comparison, many larger islands around the Mediterranean have only three or four known shipwrecks. The United States recently created a national marine sanctuary in Lake Michigan to protect 39 known shipwrecks located in 875 square miles. Fourni has 45 known shipwrecks around its 17 square mile territory — which puts our discoveries into perspective.”

Fourni is a collection of 13 islands and islets between the Aegean islands of Samos and Icaria. The small islands never had large settlements, instead its importance comes from its critical role as an anchorage and navigational point in the eastern Aegean. Fourni lies along a major east-west crossing route, as well as the primary north-south route that connected the Aegean to the Levant.

The project plans to continue the survey through 2018. After completing a full survey of the archipelago’s underwater cultural resources, it will consider excavating shipwrecks of significant scientific value.

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Ravikumar Majeti, PhD, a professor of pharmaceutical sciences at the Texas A&M Irma Lerma Rangel College of Pharmacy, and his team are working on a means around this problem. They think nano systems (tiny particles that can interact with cells) are the answer to delivering these types of difficult-to-administer drugs orally, and they think they’ve found a way, which they’ve reported in an article published in the journal Scientific Reports.

In many ways, the team has taken pieces of existing knowledge to formulate a new drug carrier. The research team’s overall approach, targeted nanosystem drug delivery, is a popular method in modern pharmacology, because tiny materials can get the drug where it is needed far better than traditional methods can.

The trouble is, the current methods of targeted drug delivery use ligands that have to out-compete the ligands that are naturally present in the body. On the other hand, Kumar’s team’s nanoparticles bind non-competitively, meaning the cells will still take up the particle even if they’re saturated with naturally occurring ligands. In order to achieve the non-competitive active transport, the Kumar team used gambogic acid, a natural product that is known for its ability to kill cancer cells.

“Our strategy is non-competitive active transport,” Kumar said. “These nanosystems have the ability to cross the intestinal barrier to reach other parts of the body and stay in circulation for a long time.” This ability to cross the intestinal barrier in sufficient quantities has been a major problem with oral medications–and part of why insulin, for example, is injected, not swallowed. In this case, the nanoparticle makes the body itself help the drug become absorbed.

“The way we put these things together is completely novel,” Kumar said. “This approach enables the development of carrier systems that have no equivalent in the world of competitive ligands.”

The system can also penetrate the blood-brain barrier, which could have important implications for drugs that need to reach the brain–to attack brain tumors, for example.

“We can fine-tune the nanosystems to match the disease in question,” said Ganugula Raghu, PhD, one of the researchers in Kumar’s lab and a co-author of the paper. “It is also relatively easy to adjust the timing of the drug release, either fast or slow, depending on the needs of the patient. For example, such systems can be designed to benefit diabetic patients by facilitating hepatic (liver) and peripheral insulin in a single dose.”

Exact concentrations of the active pharmaceutical and the ligand density on the particle can also be ‘tuned’ by controlling the ratios of functional to non-functional polymers. This can be thought of as similar to adding both real sugar (the ‘functional polymer’) and artificial sweetener (the ‘non-functional polymer’) to your iced tea. If you are trying to get exactly a certain number of calories, you can add more or less real sugar to get to that goal. To make the beverage the same consistency and sweetness, you would then add artificial, calorie-free sweeteners to make up the difference. The same basic theory applies to obtaining just the right amount of active medication.

“We really think these small particles will open up new avenues in receptor-mediated oral delivery of poorly soluble and permeable compounds that constitute about 40 percent of the new chemical entities requiring specialized delivery systems,” said Meenakshi Arora, PhD, another member of Kumar’s lab and paper co-author.

“I’m excited that this work is very translatable to the clinic,” added Prabhjot Saini, PhD, another lab member and co-author of the study. “Our work is very applicable to actual patients in need of live-saving medication–and they’re the reason we do what we do.”