Scientists Search Deep Sea Reefs for Wonder Drugs

ScienceDaily is reporting that a team of scientists will be venturing some 2000-3000 feet below the ocean surface in order to explore deep-sea reefs discovered last December. From the article: "A primary goal of the upcoming expedition, which is funded largely by the State of Florida's 'Florida Oceans Initiative,' will be to search for marine organisms that produce chemical compounds with the potential to treat human diseases such as cancer and Alzheimer's."

Comments

Curse of the Blue Gold

[eldavojohn]

First off, this isn't really 'news' as it is an alarm. When a new coral reef is discovered, we aren't sending people to look for new species or attempting to preserve it ... instead we're sending people to take samples to see if we can benefit medically from the reef.

Modern man has an impeccable record for destroying the natural environment that produces his fruits & resources. Then we sit and bitch about how it went away. Reefs are probably going to be no different. They're harder to get at, but if the run-off doesn't destroy them, I'm sure our medical companies will.

There's a report written by the UN University that details the problems being raised by this treasure of "blue gold."

Significantly, the ratio of potentially useful natural compounds to compounds screened is higher in marinesourced materials than with terrestrial organisms. There is, therefore, a higher probability of commercial success. Potential applications for marine organisms include: pharmaceuticals; enzymes; cryoprotectants; cosmaceuticals; agrichemicals; bioremediators; nutraceuticals; and fine chemicals. All the major pharmaceutical firms, including Merck, Lilly, Pfizer, Hoffman-Laroche and Bristol-Myers Squibb, have marine biology departments. Estimates put worldwide sales of marine biotechnology-related products at US$ 100 billion for the year 2000. Profits from a compound derived from a sea sponge to treat herpes were estimated to be worth US$ 50 million to US$ 100 million annually, and estimates of the value of anti-cancer agents from marine organisms are up to US$ 1 billion a year.

One of the interesting sources it cites is Blue Genes: Sharing and Conserving the World's Aquatic Biodiversity (another interesting document on the global problem of sharing the world's oceans).

Hypothetical scenario time! So, Pfizer's scientists find that a fairly common sponge produces a natural chemical that slows the growth of cancer. Unfortunately, each sponge only produces an ounce of this chemical when refined and there is no way to naturally synthesize it on a mass scale. Pfizer tries to buy the rights to harvest the sponge at a restricted rate in Florida. But they have to get permits from the local, state & federal governments and it costs them a lot of money because they send people down to the reef to hand pick the sponges. Instead, they find a supplier in a third world country (possibly around Indonesia) that promises them mass quantities of the sponge at a reduced rate. Now, the government there forbids it too but an official receives a large sum from this company and suddenly Pfizer has got incoming shipments of the sponge. The problem is that the company working for Pfizer is doing so with total blatant disregard for the ecosystem & probably its workers.

A farfetched scenario? Or something that's happened so often in the past, we'd be naïve to imagine it to stop here?

Re:Curse of the Blue Gold

[fain0v]

Even if you could sythesize anything that nature can make, there isnt enough matter in the universe to make every small molecule that might be of interest to medicinal chemists. So how do you screen out the useless molecules and find ones that might have an effect on a druggable target? You use millions of years of evolution to your advantage and isolate compounds made by organisms. These "natural products" can be used to do high-throughput screening on your drug target.

Here is a lab that does this.
http://www.umich.edu/~lsi/institute/labs/sherman/s ponge.html

Re:Curse of the Blue Gold

[archeopterix]

Any chemical that can be synthesized biologically should be perfectly capable of being synthesized in-vitro.

Synthesized in-vitro? Perhaps.

Synthesized in-vitro on a commercial scale? Look at Taxol. It took over 20 years to design a commercially viable synthesis method.

Galanthamine? To my knowledge, no commercially viable method exists.

Re:Curse of the Blue Gold

[Red Flayer]

"Any chemical that can be synthesized biologically should be perfectly capable of being synthesized in-vitro."

Should be != is. Particularly since development of the process for complex compunds can be extrmely expensive.

"Any protein can be cloned and synthesized en masse."

Protein folding is still a tricky business for a lot of proteins, and not necessarily reproducible in a lab. Plus, you've got to isolate the gene(s) responsible for the protein production, successfully insert them into bacteria or yeast to produce a viable colony, and then ferment them. By no means automatic. It's not a simple matter of 'cloning' a protein.

Cost is also a huge issue. As the GP alludes to, the availability of a cheap supply will often preclude synthetic production -- regardless of whether that supply is truly cheap in the long run (i.e., in his example, the public value of the reefs/natural sponges in the environment is not included in the cost equation for the drug company).

Sure, as the natural supply becomes more limited, it gets more expensive, and synthesis of the compound becomes an economically viable alternative for the company. But in the meanwhile, overharvesting of a natural resource can have pretty dire consequences.

Re:Curse of the Blue Gold

[Johnny5000]

The problem is that the company working for Pfizer is doing so with total blatant disregard for the ecosystem & probably its workers.

I'm the last person to make apologies for some company, but I'd like to think they're probably smart enough to not kill the golden goose. If they're making billions of dollars from reef extracts, it wouldn't do them any good to destroy the reef and lose that potential source of profits.

Of course, I could be wrong.. they could decide that they'll destroy the reef at a rate that will take 100 years (or 50, or 10) and decide that's a good window of time to make a huge profit, and by the time the reef is destroyed, they will have perfected an in-vitro method of production or been able to move onto the next wonder drug, or whatever.

Re:Curse of the Blue Gold

[AndersOSU]

If you're going to rip-off an article the least you can do is provide a link to it.
http://magic-city-news.com/article_5888.shtml

All this in light of yesterdays article about plagerism .

Re:Curse of the Blue Gold

[Oligonicella]

Your entire fifth paragraph falls apart logically. Use the northwestern yew as an example. Extremely rare species which supplies a useful anticancer compound. Were they harvested to extinction? No. Were they replaced by other yews from around the world? No. Why? It is that species which has the compound. Your paragraph falls apart historically. Which, ironically, is the very rational you use to promote it. Odd, that.

Re:Curse of the Blue Gold

[cashman73]

Now that we're beginning to understand genomics, it's becoming a lot easier to synthesize complex biomolecules. If we can identify the genes that are involved in making the proteins that go into how certain organisms produce a particular compound, we can modify those genes, put them in a particular order, then place those same genes into a bacterium and let nature do our dirty work for us! ;-)

This is pretty common, actually

[Dr.Enormous]

If you read biology journals, you'll see that just about every third or fourth paper consists of "we pureed some sea sponge in a blender and extracted this compound. And look, it kills cancer cells (*cough* and non-cancerous cells too *cough*)!" The only thing different here is a somewhat deeper venue for collection. (this isn't to say that it's not important scientific work, just that it's rather commonplace and rarely leads to much of anything)

Re:This is pretty common, actually

[Frumious Wombat]

Coming from the deliberately-synthesized school of chemistry, I was surprised when I sat on a PhD committee recently, and asked the student what the sponge did with the chemical she was discussing. I got a blank stare from the student, and one of the committee members told me that nobody knows, and the natural-product researchers just pick an organism, puree it (or some part of it), make separations, then try them on anything they'd like to cure/killl, and see what works.

As much as I applaud my colleagues for getting the state to fund their diving expedition, it would be nice if some of that money went to trying to understand what role the compounds have in the original organism, then working outward from there to design new pharmaceuticals. It might give us to the tools to stop prospecting, and instead rationally design our molecular targets to fit the application.

Of course, if you read this week's New Yorker, you can see how much effort has gone into rationally designing a replacement for sugar in food, versus how much success on the other end.

Re:Cancer

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

but cancer isn't a disease... its a mutation.

Are you sure? Disease:

1. A pathological condition of a part, organ, or system of an organism resulting from various causes, such as infection, genetic defect, or environmental stress, and characterized by an identifiable group of signs or symptoms.

2. A condition or tendency, as of society, regarded as abnormal and harmful.

Sea Exploration

[gmiley]

We really need to get back on this train. Oceanography wasn't really even around until relatively recent times. Even once it started catching on, it quickly died off. To date, one of our biggest contributions to oceanography and marine biology has been the H.M.S. Challenger in the 1870's, it's three year mission to explore strange... well, nevermind you get the picture. Sure we have made some large steps since then, but nothing that comes close.

Re:Sea Exploration

[icebrain]

Sounds eerily familiar, like the space program... we get one (or a couple) good efforts going, finally start learning stuff... and then people drop it with the mentality of "all right, that's good enough." I'm sure there's a good supply of young people who would be very willing to do out on new oceanographic research trips... but I'm betting they're either lured away by bigger research grants in other areas, or no one wants to fund them for the above-mentioned reason. And I think the public perception of the field is either of Mr. Cousteau ("a dead guy who lived on a boat") or Robert Ballard ("oh, the guy that found the Titanic"). And everyone thinks oceanography is finding old shipwrecks, and they quickly turn to thoughts of salvaging an old wreck or finding some hidden conspiracy... (or maybe that's just my lack of coffee speaking). The above probably holds true for most areas of science... people want lots of amazing new scientific discoveries fast, thrilling, and cheap. They don't understand how science works, and write it off as boring and useless... then move on to "American Idol."

Re:Sea Exploration

[gmiley]

You are correct, you do see this in many fields of scientific research. An idea catches on, and just as quickly it fades away. In the 1930's two men invented what is called the "bathysphere", it was eventually made by GE (General Electric), the home appliance company. The two men were Barton and Beebe, they got to a depth of around 1,400 feet.

After that, in 1953, a Swiss explorer, Auguste Piccard, made a record shattering dive to almost 7 miles. This vessel, the Trieste, was sponsored by the U.S. Navy. After that they funding stopped citing it as a waste of money. Man has not since been back to that depth (AFAIK), making it strikingly similar to the space program and the Lunar projects. =/

Odd. . .

[Limburgher]

Now I have "Octopus's Garden" running through my head. How strange.

Reef Etiquette

[schweinhund]

For those who are not familiar with coral reefs and may go for a casual snorkel or swim sometime, please do not physically touch the coral itself as this kills it. Because of this, federal law requires swimmers to wear flotation jackets when nearby to avoid contact.

It takes 30,000 years to grow 1 cubic inch of coral, and the mistreatment of the reefs around Florida (1960s dynamite fishing, jewelry harvesting, etc.) has made it so that the reef off of the Florida Keys is the last living coral reef in the region.

Re:Reef Etiquette

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

It takes 30,000 years to grow 1 cubic inch of coral,

Source?

I thought it was more like 1/2 inch per year

Re:Reef Etiquette

[gmiley]

Just a quick google search found:

Ariel Roth of the Geoscience Research Institute has commented on the fact that estimates of net reef growth rates vary from 0.8 millimetres per year to 80 millimetres per year, whereas actual measurements based on soundings at depth are many times these estimates.3 Roth suggests a number of reasons for this difference.

source And from Wikipedia:

Formation of the calciferous exoskeleton involves deposition of calcium carbonate by the polyps from calcium ions isolated from seawater. The rate of deposition, while varying greatly between species and environmental conditions, can be as much as 10 g / m2 of polyp / day (0.3 ounce / sq yd / day). This is however hugely dependent on light, with production reduced by 90% at night compared to the middle of the day[6].

source

Humans are not that unique in the world

[BinaryOne]

The fact is, most of the health problems (or most of the problems, period) we face as humans, ie: cellular degeneration, bacterial infections, etc. have some analog in other forms of nature.

The production of antibiotics by fungi and other bacteria to reduce the population of competing organisms has been honed by centuries of evolution. If preserved, supported and studied the processes, and the compounds are there to be used.

The science is slow and tedious, but many of the cultures that live in these rich habitats are well versed in the properties of the flora they have around them.

Reefs

[Sqreater]

How can we be expected to destroy them if we don't know where they are? Let's put more money into hunting down these "reef" things so we can pit-mine them for a solution to athlete's foot.

Or, maybe we can just leave them the hell alone. How about it scientists? Just a thought.

Depths can't be right.

[Anonymous Coward]

This doesn't really make sense to me. I had been taught that coral reefs required the photosynthesis of the Zooanthelae algae which therefore, restricted such reefs to shallow waters where sunlight could penetrate. This article is talking about coral reefs 2,000 to 3,000 feet deep! That makes no sense.

For those that don't know, sunlight doesn't penetrate into the depths. It is noticeably dimmer at 120 feet (an approximate limit for sport SCUBA divers.) and it is quite dark at 300 feet. No light whatsoever reaches 2,000 feet or deeper.

Further investigation shows that the originally discovery was coral reefs 200-300 feet down which, while quite deep for coral, is far above the darkness of 2,000 feet.

Scientists Search Deep Sea Reefs for Wonder Drugs

[slushbat]

Of all the stupid places to drop your stash of wonder drugs over the side of the boat.

This is always a needle in haystack deal....

[King_TJ]

A friend of mine with a biology background took a job involving searching for new plants and herbs with potential scientific/medical uses. He was sent on expensive trips to remote parts of Africa and other locations to examine the plants and flowers - and after years of it, found absolutely nothing useful. Did this mean he was a "failure" or lost his job over it? Heck no... That was pretty much what they *expected* would happen. It's just that there's so much money involved if someone DOES hit upon a useful one, they'll throw wads of money at the problem.

This strikes me as the same thing, only in the ocean rather than on land. Exploring is all well and good, but if there's sufficient risk of doing major damage to the landscape - it seems like the negatives outweigh the lottery-winning like chances of finding a benefit from it.

Human Papilloma Virus

[TerranFury]

Actually, you'd be surprised. Nothing gets into your cells and screws up your DNA like a virus.

Have you heard of HPV (Human Papilloma Virus)? It's a very-common (family) of sexually-transmitted viruses. We've known for a long time that certain types of HPV are the cause of cervical and ovarian cancer in women and testicular cancer in men (e.g.: these cancers are STDs), and more recent research has shown that HPV is also linked to certain forms of skin cancer.

In other words: Yes, cancer can be and often is caused by infectious diseases!

Notice to all sea sponges: Don't panic

[paiute]

Although it may seem that if a promising drug is found in a deep sea organism, the rapacious drug companies will get all Constant Gardener on them and start the dredging, that is not how it goes. If a compound is isolated from a sponge that had some desirable bioactivity in humans, that compound is isolated and its stucture is determined. Now the reason this compound has some activity in humans - a species the sponge has had no evolutionary contact with - is most usually due to the way some corner of the chemical sticks into a receptor or enzyme in the mammalian cell. This corner, by no means the whole thing, is called a pharmaphore - the actual working part of the molecule. The rest of the compound is unnecessary. The drug company doesn't need to waste money making that part, or squeezing out gallons of sponge juice. They set their hundreds of medicinal chemists to work preparing a simpler, easier to manufacure, compound that contains the necessary pharmaphore.

DiscoveryHD program on the reef

[dmt99]

The DiscoveryHD channel has a program, "Predators of the Great Barrier Reef" which shows a natural enemy to the worlds reef population, the Crown Of Thorns Starfish. These starfish are demolishing the reefs at a very fast rate. During the show, they discuss the fact that certain sea animals (fish, eels, sea-snakes) have venom which can help with pain management and possibly cure some illnesses. http://dhd.discovery.com/tvlistings/episode.jsp?ep isode=0&cpi=110507&gid=0&channel=DHD

If Mother Nature Keeps Fucking Us...

[enjahova]

We better fuck her back!

"Oceans lash our coasts. Deserts Burn. The sky provides no shelter. Turmoil of Biblical proportions threatens not just our weather but life itself."

Don't those sound like great reasons to fight back? :)

In all seriousness I feel totally out of the loop on global warming, but Al Gore's scaremongering movie makes me think the current attitude is exaggerated. I believe that there is truth to global warming, but I am starting to disbelieve anything that threatens impending doom (this includes terrorism).

Every generation thinks theirs is the last, why should ours be any different?