Objective
This proposal was prepared with the help of an Exploratory award given to Bioma r SA and Loch Fyne Seafarms. The exploratory award covered a research feasibili ty study as well as novelty verification, economic assessment, partner search a nd the worprogramme definition. The project aims to provide new methods of supp ly of marine organisms for natural products drug research and development. It s eeks both to improve supply methods, ensuring both continuity of supply and red ucing the costs of drug development and production, and to replace the environm entally unsustainable need for collecting large quantities of marine invertebra tes from the wild. The technical risk is very high but justified in terms of the lucrative economic rewards for success and the social importance of improv ing the supply of new anti-cancer drugs. It will also boost European competitiv eness in an area largely dominated by the USA. The global state of the art in a ll the fields being examined is poor so the project has a high probability of m aking major advances beyond the state of the art even if it does not succeed in all its aims. A number of different and competing research avenues are being e xplored as there is no obvious predictable winner in terms of the technology most likely to succeed in securing supply. While this inevitably leads to some dissipation of effort it does improve the probability of hitting on one or more lines of commercially exploitable intellectual property rights (IPR). There are two major routes envisaged as possible methods of supply: aquaculture of i nvertebrate species producing interesting compounds; biosynthesis of compounds of interest by culturing invertebrate cells in bioreactors or the co-culturing of bacterial symbionts responsible for the production of anti-cancer compounds within the invertebrate. Both of these routes will be explored, concentrating o n an invertebrate species already known to contain a potent anti-cancer agent o f likely microbial origin and on a chemically defended species that is already being adapted for aquaculture use and may contain compounds of interest. The re search will consist of closing life cycle loops for aquaculture of these specie s and in developing methods of cell culture and co-culture of symbiotic bacteri a. Model species will be used to initially investigate feasible approaches. A v ariety of other species from Northern Europe, suitable for immediate aquacultur e production will also be screened for anti-cancer activity.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
- medical and health sciencesbasic medicinepharmacology and pharmacydrug discovery
- agricultural sciencesagriculture, forestry, and fisheriesfisheries
- engineering and technologyenvironmental biotechnologybioremediationbioreactors
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Call for proposal
Data not availableFunding Scheme
CRS - Cooperative research contractsCoordinator
24231 ONZONILLA
Spain