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.







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