Find miraculous remedies from the sea

Scientists at the Scripps Ocean Research Institute (USA) hope the ocean can provide miraculous remedies in the treatment of serious diseases for humans.

Dr. William Fenical, director of the institute's Marine Biology Center, said that in a scoop of seawater can contain more microorganisms than some plants in a tropical forest. This may be a valuable source of medicine that so far humanity has not paid adequate attention, although from the snail species it has extracted analgesics, or from horseshoe crabs, it has extracted insulin treatment. diabetes.

Dr. William Fenical
(Photo: Scrippsnews)

According to Dr. William Fenical, up to half of the currently prepared drugs in the world come from natural compounds. Typically, penexilin is found in mold, which marked a revolution in the development of antibiotics that saved hundreds of millions of lives since the mid-1940s. Scientists have so far only The main limitation is in studying the healing effects of living organisms on land, while 3/4 of the Earth is a sea. With the shrinking forest area, the chances of finding new drugs from living things on the ground are reduced.

Therefore, for many years, Scripps Institute scientists have turned to the sea to look for new chemical compounds that can heal. The enormous number of different genetic resources in the oceans creates endless potential for discovering new drugs. There are about 10 million unique organisms - from animals to plants and bacteria living in seawater - and in a cubic meter of seawater, there are up to 1,000 types of plants and organisms.

In the past 20 years, there are about 12,000 new compounds extracted from marine organisms, used as medicine or cosmetics. Biologically active substances found from marine environments have diverse and unique characteristics. In recent years, Scripps Institute scientists have collected samples of sludge in the seabed to search for chemical compounds for research in pharmaceutical science in laboratories. Through research, scientists have identified two compounds that can fight cancer currently used in clinical trials. In 2006 alone, about 30 similar chemical compounds extracted from marine organisms were also used in experimental treatment.