concept

Marine natural product

A molecule made by a marine organism, usually for defence or to hold territory, and consequently carrying chemical structures far more intricate than a laboratory would think to design. The sea has given medicine some real drugs: cytarabine for leukaemia, traced to a Caribbean sponge; ziconotide for severe nerve pain, from cone snail venom; eribulin and trabectedin for cancer. But the success rate is barely credible — fewer than one in ten thousand screened compounds becomes an approved drug. The more important point: none of those drugs is still obtained from wild organisms. Once the molecular structure is known, synthesis or fermentation is always cheaper and steadier than going out to collect.