Food Microbiology

Traditionally, higher plants and terrestrial microorganisms have proven to be the richest sources of natural drugs. However, we are living in a planet of oceans. Evolutionary development has equipped many marine organisms with the appropriate mechanisms to survive, developing exquisitely complex biological and chemical mechanisms for defense, attack, signalization and other still unknown purposes. These biological capabilities are clearly revealed by their ability to biosynthesize and release potent chemical weapons that are active per se. Such novel chemical structures often result in new modes of action and open up the potential of new ways to treat cancer and other diseases. Early studies of the marine environment focused on natural  products from invertebrates and tunicates have led to the isolation of several classes of bioactive natural products mainly small molecules such as polyketides and non-ribosomal peptides. However, there is an emerging a rational suspicion, based on marine sponge/tunicate metagenomics that these compounds originally isolated from metazoan organisms are in fact of bacterial origin. The cases of trabectedin (ET-743), didemnins, kahaladide, onnamides, bryostatin or dolastatin are some examples of the role of marine microbiome as producers of bioactive metabolites with application in oncology. Currently, genomic mining for polyketide synthases (PKS) and non-ribosomal peptide synthetases (NRPS) improves the probability of success in drug discovery using marine microorganisms, both in isolated genomes and metagenomes. Dr. Fernando de la Calle will discuss the state of the art in marine biotechnology applied to drug discovery under the experience of PharmaMar, Spanish company focused on research, development, and commercialization of marine drove drugs for the treatment of cancer.