Harvesting the Seas : Researchers Dive the Ocean Depths in Search of Organisms for New Drugs

Take two bryzoans and call in the morning.

Someday, a doctor might actually prescribe such a dose.

In the quest for new drugs, scientists have tapped much of the Earth. Yet, one territory remains relatively untouched: the sea.

Researchers are diving into the world of sponges, tunicates, soft corals, gorgonians and bryzoans--an underwater panoply of creatures and organisms that might provide sources for medicine to treat diseases from arthritis to cancer, or even AIDS.

Two San Diego scientists, Bill Fenical and D. John Faulkner, believe that the marine life and microorganisms that dwell fathoms below the ocean surface could change our lives.

Fenical and Faulkner, recognized as pioneers in the field of developing marine medicines, respectively have isolated a chemical from a sea whip coral and another in a marine sponge that contain anti-inflammatory agents that could be utilized to prevent swelling and pain from arthritis.

The hunt for new drugs has gained urgency as doctors find that some diseases, including tuberculosis, are developing resistance to drugs, and others, such as AIDS and certain cancers, have evaded known medications. The ocean, Fenical and Faulkner say, is humankind’s next frontier in the search for new sources of drugs.

“We can’t go to the soil forever because we are finding 95% of things in the soil are already known. We are going to have to go to the ocean,” said Fenical, a professor of chemistry at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. “It will be essential that we develop new agents. We need new drugs desperately.”

Marine-based medicines have not reached the marketplace, but they may soon. “We are in all stages of success, from aspiring to have substances to having substances in clinical trials,” Fenical said.

He has studied not only sea fans, sea squirts and other creatures, but in the last four years has searched for microorganisms, the microscopic bacteria that dwell in the ocean. More and more, he has become convinced that these tiny organisms--hundreds of which can be found in a drop of water--may prove easiest to harvest and convert into medicines.

The process has a precedent--bacteria from bread mold led to penicillin. And Fenical hopes that marine microorganisms will also strike pay dirt.

Researching marine life and microorganisms may conjure up images of Jules Verne’s Capt. Nemo and his submarine the Nautilus, but it is the stuff of serious science, experts say.

“The potential is high for finding interesting new agents, not only for cancer and AIDS but other diseases, because marine life organisms produce different chemicals than those found on land,” said Gordon Cragg, chief of the natural products branch at the National Cancer Institute.

Researchers for years have utilized chemical agents found in nature. Aspirin comes from the bark of a willow tree. Quinine, the anti-malaria drug, comes from fever tree bark. Codeine and morphine are derived from opium poppies. Antibiotics, such as penicillin and tetracycline, are produced by microbial fermentation.

As scientists exhaust traditional sources, industry has become increasingly interested in the search for natural products that might yield new chemical agents. That search has broadened to include compounds that sound like ingredients for a witch’s brew, such as frog skin and the venom of the cone snail.

In scouring the Earth, investigators have found themselves in more remote places on land and, finally, at sea. Advances in technology have led to better diving gear and submersibles that make the oceans’ depths more accessible.

Only a relatively small number of scientists--50 or so around the world--work full time on marine medical research. In the United States, marine organisms have supplied several chemicals that are likely to be developed into drugs:

* A Bahamian sponge yields the chemical discodermolide, a potent agent that may one day be used to suppress organ rejection after transplant surgery.

* A West Coast bryozoan--a moss animal that is an aquatic invertebrate--supplies bryostatin, a potential anti-cancer product, which is being tested so researchers can determine if it can safely be administered to humans.

A Caribbean tunicate, or a tubular, transparent, jellyfish-like creature that resembles a shell-less snail, provides an agent called didemnin B, which is also being tested as anti-cancer medicine.

* A Caribbean gorgonian coral and a sponge found in the western Pacific are being studied as anti-inflammatory agents.

But the process of gleaning medications from nature’s arena is long and arduous, and fraught with regulatory hurdles. As Fenical pointed out, taxol--a chemical derived from yew trees that is considered to be a potentially effective anti-cancer agent--was discovered in the 1970s but is just now being tried out.

“If we discover a substance today, you might see it in the year 2000,” Fenical said.