-

                       Marine Pharmacology in Drug Discovery and Development

New diseases are emerging due to the changes in the environments. Overburdened is created for the existing resources for the drugs due to enormous growth of world population. Though 75% of earth's surface is covered by water the research on pharmacology of marine organisms is limited and remained unexplored. Marine environment gives countless and diverse resources for the development of new drugs against cancer or malaria. The aquatic organisms are screened for antibacterial, immunomodulator, anti-fungal, anti-inflammatory, anticancer, antimicrobial, neuroprotective, analgesic, and antimalarial properties are used for the new drug developments throughout the world. Marine pharmacology offers the scope for research on Drugs Discovery and Development from marine origin.
Marine pharmacology is a branch of pharmaceutical sciences which focuses on the substances with active pharmacological properties present in marine species of plants and animals. Marine environment is an exceptional store house of novel bioactive natural products, with structural and chemical features generally not found in terrestrial natural products. The marine organisms also provide a rich source of nutraceuticals and potential candidates for the treatment of several human diseases. Now-a-days Research work on drug discovery is focused on marine pharmacology. This includes the discovery of new pharmaceutical candidates from marine microbes. Till now Around 13,000 new molecules (secondary metabolites) have been discovered out of which 3000 are having active properties.
Marine pharmacology can be classified on the basis of source of the candidate drug
  • Genetically engineered marine organisms
  • Manufacture of pharmaceuticals and nutraceuticals of marine origin
  • Chemicals produced by or found in marine organisms shown to have a wide variety of applications as pharmaceuticals.
Marine drugs can be broadly classified based on their actions as follows
(1)Antibacterial (2)Anti-inflammatory (3)Neuroprotective (4) Antiparasitic (5) Antiparasitic (6) Anticancer (7) Analgesic (8) Antimicrobial (9) Antimalarial activity.

Approved drugs of marine origin

Cytarabine (cytosine arabinoside or arabinosyl cytosine, ara-C):  Used in different types of leukemia, including acute myelocytic leukemia, lymphocytic leukemia, meningeal leukemia, and blast crisis phase of chronic myelogenous leukemia.
Vidarabine (adenine arabinoside, ara-A or arabinofuranosyladenine): Used in recurrent epithelial keratitis caused by HSV type 1 and 2, acute kerato-conjunctivitis, and also for superficial keratitis.
Ziconotide: Used as analgesic with a novel mechanism of action.
Trabectedin: Used in the treatment of soft-tissue sarcoma and in relapsed cases of platinum-sensitive ovarian cancer.
Several other compounds in clinical trial phase 1,2,3
Anticancer Drugs Developed from Marine Origin
Hope for Future
Targeting the various signal transduction pathways involved in carcinogenesis is one of the best treatment strategies for cancer. Some inhibitors of these pathways derived from the marine organisms have been re-designed, and further studies were done to offset tumor progression and curtail carcinogenesis Modern anticancer drugs discovery is looking for cytotoxic agents with improved accuracy, efficacy with target specificity and sensitivity.

Marine environment has become source of natural products, molecules, and drugs of therapeutic use. The science and industry has established the oceans as a prospective source for new potential drug leads. Scientists have come up with drugs of various categories out of which anticancer, anti-inflammatory, analgesics, and antivirals are the most important to mention. These lead molecules are in different stages of preclinical and clinical testing stages around the world. Many drugs from marine sources have a promising effect on several chronic and non-curable diseases like cancer. They Can open up a new chapter of making the treatment of chronic diseases at low cost and successful.







Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Nanomedicine & Women’s Health

-
Image
Nanomedicine have the potential to revolutionize the diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of a range of conditions and diseases affecting women’s health Nanomedicine is the application of  nanotechnology  in the field of medicine with a view to enhancing the diagnosis and treatment of various diseases. Nanotechnology is already involved in a range of biomedical applications including drug and vaccine delivery, diagnostic imaging, nanosensor diagnostics, nano-enabled therapies, and tissue engineering. A growing recognition of the specific health care requirements of women has resulted in the proposed organizational changes in the provision of health care, focusing predominantly on a life course approach to women’s health care. As our understanding of the benefits of nanomaterial-based agents and diagnostics continues to grow in terms of selectivity, sensitivity, affinity, and detection limits, there is a widespread anticipation that nanotechnology will play an incre...
Read more

20th World Conference on Pharmaceutical Chemistry and Drug Design

-
Image
Drug design is an inventive process of medication discovered by biological target. It is also known as rational drug design or rational design. The drug is most commonly an organic small molecule that activates or inhibits the function of a biomolecule such as a protein, which in turn results in a therapeutic benefit to the patient. In the most basic sense. Drug design relies on the knowledge of the three-dimensional structure of bioactive sites. The drug is an active molecule, when it is predicament to target site it can either inhibit or activate the function of a biomolecule which effects in therapeutic benefit. The main objective in drug design is to foresee whether a given particle will bind to a target and if so how unequivocally. Molecular mechanics or molecular dynamics are regularly used to predict the conformation of the little particle and to model conformational changes in the biological targets that may happen when the little molecules ties to it.   Th...
Read more

Fundamentals of Drug Safety and Pharmacovigilance

-
Image
The challenge of maximizing drug safety and maintaining public confidence has become increasingly complex. Pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies must not only monitor, but also proactively assess and manage drug risk throughout a product’s lifecycle, from development to post market.   20th World Conference on Pharmaceutical Chemistry and Drug Design  is going to be held in Dubai during September 03-05 2018, under the enclosed title  "Pharmacovigilance" https://drug-chemistry.pharmaceuticalconferences.com/ Pharmacovigilance : WHO defined as 'the pharmacological science and activities relating to the detection, assessment, understanding and prevention of adverse effects or any other drug-related problem’ An umbrella term used to describe the processes for monitoring and evaluating ADRs is a key component of effective drug regulation systems, clinical practice and public health programs. It is the study of the safety of marketed drugs examined unde...
Read more