Health and medical research

Rich Medical Drug Resources at Bottom of the Sea

The New Frontier of Marine Medicines

2.23.2006

In the continuing search for cures to human diseases, humankind has explored and exploited the terrestrial environment for more than 3,000 years. But as existing and new threats emerge from infectious diseases and drug-resistant viruses, scientists must increasingly look to the seas for new discoveries and promising cures.

William Fenical, director of the Center for Marine Biotechnology and Biomedicine at UCSD's Scripps Institution of Oceanography, says science and society have just begun to realize the enormous potential and benefits from the largely unexplored world's oceans.

"At the moment we are failing in the treatment of many diseases," said Fenical. "We've got our heads in the sand in many of these areas and if we don't act soon we will see more and more deaths from infectious and drug-resistant diseases. It is becoming an epidemic of concern of which the public is ill-informed. So it's important for everyone to realize that medical links to the ocean are critical for the future."

While land-based microbes formed the foundation of drug discovery for more than 40 years, the potential of marine microbes is only superficially known, Fenical says. In the past decade, the oceans have provided several medical discoveries that are now producing drugs. A potent pain medication was developed from knowledge yielded by a venomous gastropod mollusk. Currently more than 30 marine-derived molecules are in preclinical development or clinical trials targeting a variety of cancer types.

One of the most promising ocean resources appears to be deep-sea sediments. Research in Fenical's laboratory, for example, has produced Salinispora, a new bacteria found in ocean mud that has produced a promising cancer inhibitor.

But even with such promising achievements, Fenical says the oceans remain isolated from mainstream discovery and development in the pharmaceutical industry. He predicts this will change in the next decade as the pharmaceutical industry and the National Institutes of Health shift their approaches to medical discoveries and human medical needs.

Above, samples of the new marine genus "Marinispora," which has been recovered from marine sediments by researchers in William Fenical's lab at Scripps. Species within this new bacterial genus produce antitumor and antibiotic compounds of new structure classes.

"When the sheer immensity of the ocean bottom is considered—keeping in mind that it covers 70 percent of the earth's surface—it is not difficult to conceive of the importance of its resources in contributing to the badly needed antibiotics of the next millennium," says Fenical. "In the future, explorations of the world's oceans, using modern chemical and molecular genetic technologies, will uncover a rich treasure chest of new medicinal products, cosmetics, foods, industrial chemicals and new, environment-friendly industrial processes. As we have benefited from life on land, it is reasonable to predict that the next few decades will be filled with new discoveries from our greatest untapped resource: the world's oceans."