Marine organisms to be developed into medicines
Four-year MAREX project aims to find biological activity from algae, fish and sea anemones
Researchers in the Faculty of Pharmacy at the University of Helsinki are co-ordinating an extensive project that aims to find biological activity from organisms in the sea, which would be suitable for use as a basis for pharmaceutical products. Compounds isolated from marine organisms would be chemically modified to be more suitable for medical purposes.
The four-year (2010–2014) MAREX project involves researchers and corporate sector representatives from 13 countries.
Of the project’s total budget of €7.9m, €6m originates from the EU’s Seventh Framework Programme.
MAREX is co-ordinated by Professor Heikki Vuorela in the Faculty of Pharmacy.
The extensive project has good opportunities for interesting active compounds for the development of pharmaceuticals against cancer, microbes or pain, the scientists say.
The project starts off with sampling, with researchers collecting, among other things, micro- and macro-algae, sea anemones, tunicates and fish from the Atlantic, the Pacific, the Mediterranean and the Baltic Sea.
‘Right from the start, we will consider whether an algae or other raw material from the sea may be utilised on an industrial scale. It is not enough that the material has potential to be a cancer pharmaceutical. Instead, it must be available or it must be possible to produce it in sufficiently large quantities,’ says Päivi Tammela, researcher at the Faculty of Pharmacy.
According to the Finnish researchers, compounds obtained from sea organisms usually have a very complex chemical structure. The goal is to identify the most important structural parts of the most interesting compounds. With the information, it will be possible to simplify the structure of a complex compound considerably while retaining the original biological activity.