What would you say if I told you that the next generation of powerful anti-cancer drugs might come from an obscure genus of bacteria that live in the muck at the bottom of the ocean? For the past five years, a team at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at U.C. San Diego has been working to explore the potential of microbes called actinomycetes found in deep ocean sediment. The reason these primitive creatures, many of which were only recently identified and named, so intrigue scientists is that they produce powerful natural antibiotics that also function to inhibit inflammation and cancer. (Many of the common antibiotics we use today like streptomycin and vancomycin were originally synthesized from bacteria, but the antibiotic potential of land-based bacteria has been drying up in the past ten years.)
Found in warm, subtropical waters such as those off the coast of Fiji and the Bahamas, the newly named genus Salinispora includes hundreds of strains; so far, of 100 strains tested, 80 percent produced molecules that inhibit cancer cell growth, and 35 percent killed pathogenic bacteria and fungi. Is it any surprise that harvest operations are ramping up?
Since making the original discovery of the new microbes in 2002, a team led by William Fenical of the Scripps Center for Marine Biotechnology and Biomedicine (CMBB) has been working to isolate the antibacterial compound, which they've now dubbed salinisporamide A. But this would just be another lab breakthrough if it weren't for the team's entrepreneurial hutzpah, which has already resulted in numerous patents and licenses for development rights.
Commercial development of two powerful new anti-cancer drugs derived from salinisporamide A is already underway in the labs of a small, 30-person company called Nereus Pharmaceuticals in nearby San Diego. Despite a fair amount of secrecy, they've landed significant VC funding and lined up partnerships with big international pharmaceuticals.
The company's unusual business plan is based on developing a "library" of marine microbes with antibiotic and anti-cancer potential that they're genetically sequencing. Last year Scripps announced a successful project to genetically map one of the strains of Salinispora, a breakthrough that will hopefully lead to the ability to synthesize the active compounds, producing them more cheaply and in greater quantities.
Two drugs are already through Phase I testing and a lung cancer compound recently entered Phase II trials. Company execs hope the result of the broad-net "library" approach will be a faster and broader R&D pipeline with multiple products in testing at once.
