Sesselja Ómarsdóttir, Associate Professor, Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Iceland presents,
The oceans cover more than 70% of the Earth´s surface and the marine biota has a very long evolutionary history and vast biodiversity. The interest in marine natural product chemistry and pharmacology research has grown significantly for the last decades along with improvements in technology regarding collection, screening, identification and structural elucidation of natural products. Approximately 24,000 compounds have been described from marine organisms and seven drugs derived from marine organisms are already on the market.
Iceland, with an exclusive economic zone of 200 nautical miles is largely unexplored with respect to chemical constituents of pharmacological interest. Iceland is a geothermally active area and hosts both hot and cold adapted organisms on land and in the ocean around it. In particular, the confluence of cold and warm water masses and geothermal activity creates a unique marine environment that has not been evaluated for the potential of marine natural product diversity. Unexplored and unique areas such as the hydrothermal vent sites at the sea floor are of particular interest. In Nature, continual competition between different life forms for survival is manifested among sessile marine organisms in adaptations for defense from predation, resistance to overgrowth, and acquisition of space for colonization at the bottom of the ocean. Our recent bioprospecting project is directed towards one of the first systematic investigation of the marine natural product diversity of benthic invertebrates and actinomycetes occurring in Icelandic waters, and their potential for drug-lead discovery in several key therapeutic areas. In this talk the focus is on marine natural products drug discovery and marine bioprospecting, followed by presentation of recent results showing isolation and structure elucidation of new and previously known marine natural products.