Marine Medicine
Searches for new medicines have shown that marine invertebrates produce more antibiotic, anti-cancer, and anti-inflammatory substances than any group of land organisms. THe most favorable include invertebrate groups sponges, tunicates, ascidians, bryozoans, octocorals, and some molluscs, annelids, and echinoderms. The two compounds I will be talking about are Bryostatin and Ecteinascdin.
Bryostatin is extracted from the bryozoan, Bugula neritina; potential treatment for leukemia and melanoma. The bryozoan, Bugula neririna, is a tiny two tentacled organism that looks like a piece of moss. It was found by chemist George Peitti who collected specimens off the coast of western florida. He found that the compound had cancer fighting characteristics and in 1981 he isolated the compound. Labs found that it attacks multiple malignancies and it is currently undergoing human trails. It showed to be successful in animal models of Alzheimer's disease that a Phase II trial was started by 2010. Bryostatin has also been studied in people with HIV. Ecteinascidin/ Trabectedin was extracted from tunicates and is being tested in humans for treatment of breast and ovarian cancers and other tumors. Rinehart is the one who discovered this and had collected his sea squirts by scuba diving in the reefs of the West Indies. It is used in patients who were treated with other anticancer drugs. It is also being studied in the treatment of other types of cancer. Ecteinascidin 743 kills cancer cells by damaging their DNA and stopping them from dividing. There are many names for it such as ET-743 and Yondelis. The drug is sold by Pharma Mar S.A. and Johnson and Johnson under the name Yondelis.
If species are competing for the same piece of living space, it would be helpful to produce a substance that would attack rapidly dividing cells of the competing organism. Since cancer cells often divide more rapidly than normal cells, the same substance might have anti-cancer properties. This is the reasoning behind why these invertebrates might have evolved or adapted to have these abilities. 90% of all organisms are invertebrates. They need to find some ways to set themselves apart from those like them to become more advantageous. We have only scratched the surface of the medicine we could discover and benefit from in the ocean. We have only discovered 3% of our oceans, the possibilities of what could be out there are endless. With so much more funding, interest, and exploration the medical field could evolve ten times over. Unfortunately marine biology does not get the same attention and money as programs like NASA. The times when ocean exploration was at its highest was during submarine warfare and if we only shifted our money focus from war to medicine we could accomplish so many new and helpful things.
https://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/explorations/02sab/background/biodiversity/biodiversity.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trabectedin
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bryostatin
https://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/facts/medicinesfromsea.html
Bryostatin is extracted from the bryozoan, Bugula neritina; potential treatment for leukemia and melanoma. The bryozoan, Bugula neririna, is a tiny two tentacled organism that looks like a piece of moss. It was found by chemist George Peitti who collected specimens off the coast of western florida. He found that the compound had cancer fighting characteristics and in 1981 he isolated the compound. Labs found that it attacks multiple malignancies and it is currently undergoing human trails. It showed to be successful in animal models of Alzheimer's disease that a Phase II trial was started by 2010. Bryostatin has also been studied in people with HIV. Ecteinascidin/ Trabectedin was extracted from tunicates and is being tested in humans for treatment of breast and ovarian cancers and other tumors. Rinehart is the one who discovered this and had collected his sea squirts by scuba diving in the reefs of the West Indies. It is used in patients who were treated with other anticancer drugs. It is also being studied in the treatment of other types of cancer. Ecteinascidin 743 kills cancer cells by damaging their DNA and stopping them from dividing. There are many names for it such as ET-743 and Yondelis. The drug is sold by Pharma Mar S.A. and Johnson and Johnson under the name Yondelis.
If species are competing for the same piece of living space, it would be helpful to produce a substance that would attack rapidly dividing cells of the competing organism. Since cancer cells often divide more rapidly than normal cells, the same substance might have anti-cancer properties. This is the reasoning behind why these invertebrates might have evolved or adapted to have these abilities. 90% of all organisms are invertebrates. They need to find some ways to set themselves apart from those like them to become more advantageous. We have only scratched the surface of the medicine we could discover and benefit from in the ocean. We have only discovered 3% of our oceans, the possibilities of what could be out there are endless. With so much more funding, interest, and exploration the medical field could evolve ten times over. Unfortunately marine biology does not get the same attention and money as programs like NASA. The times when ocean exploration was at its highest was during submarine warfare and if we only shifted our money focus from war to medicine we could accomplish so many new and helpful things.
https://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/explorations/02sab/background/biodiversity/biodiversity.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trabectedin
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bryostatin
https://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/facts/medicinesfromsea.html