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PharmSea project focuses on bioactive compounds from marine organisms

A new PharmaSea project is focusing on biodiscovery research and the development and commercialisation of new bioactive compounds from marine organisms, says Science Select. Organisms include deep-sea sponges and bacteria, to evaluate their potential as novel drug leads or ingredients for nutrition or cosmetic applications.

The international team of scientists is led by Professor Marcel Jaspars of the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, and coordinated by Dr. Camila Esguerra of the University of Leuven in Belgium.

One of the aims of PharmaSea is to discover new marine bacteria that can produce novel antibiotics: "There's a real lack of good antibiotics in development at the moment. There hasn't been a completely new antibiotic registered since 2003. If nothing's done to combat this problem we're going to be back to a 'pre-antibiotic-era' in around ten or twenty years, where bugs and infections that are currently quite simple to treat could be fatal", says Marcel Jaspars, who is Professor of Chemistry and Director of the Marine Biodiscovery Centre at the University of Aberdeen.

Read the full article on www.selectscience.net.

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