Oceans may yield important medicine, UK scientists say

The world's oceans may be the feeding ground for the next generation of medicines to treat diseases such as cancer, it was claimed today, as a bio-research centre was officially opened.

The University of Aberdeen Marine Biodiscovery Centre will investigate the possibility of creating drugs out of marine organisms.

It is one of the few centres in the world to bring together chemists and biologists to work on new medicine, the university said.

The new unit is part-funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council.

Scientists said it will help push the boundaries of their research.

Marcel Jaspars, the centre director, said: "The greatest diversity of life on our planet can be found in the world's seas in the form of marine organisms, which live in a huge variety of habitats.

"Scientists at the University of Aberdeen have been conducting research exploring how the rich and diverse range of unique compounds which exist in these organisms can be used in the development of drugs and other novel biomedical products for a number of years.

"The creation of the new Marine Biodiscovery Centre is allowing us to advance our research using state-of-the-art technologies, and work towards important new breakthroughs in this crucial area of medical discovery."

The centre will have seven staff and is one of only three in Europe which explores the natural resources in the seas and oceans, the university said.

The projects will include one on the use of bacteria sourced from the world's deepest oceans to find compounds to treat bacterial infections and parasitic disease. Another one will investigate whether fungi from Fijian coral reefs can be used to treat cancer and inflammatory diseases.

Leading biomedicine and biotechnology scientists will attend the university today for a two-day conference to help launch the centre.

It includes a library of hundreds of compounds and thousands of extracts from organisms from across the planet such as from the Mariana Trench, the deepest part of the earth, in the western Pacific Ocean.

The centre has a magnet which is 250,000 times stronger than the earth's magnetic field, which will be used to analyse compounds and the chemical structure of molecules. The research unit also boasts a system which can identify how metals occur in living organisms and in the environment.