Marine Microbes: Unexplored Therapeutic Bio-mine

Abstract

Whenever we focus our attention towards malignancies caused by cancer, usually our mind gets preoccupied with many conflicting thoughts. When we look at cancer statistics, our heart starts sinking more and more as we drill down to details about incidence rate, mortality rate, trends etc. In spite of tremendous technological advancements over several decades, cancer is second only to cardiovascular disease as a cause of death. When we see so many people dying from cancer, sometimes we wonder if this is a nature’s answer to keep population under control. But when we bring together data from different sources like epidemiological studies, cancer molecular biology, molecular epidemiological studies; we are more than convinced that cancer is a man-made malignancy akin global warming. In fact when we review source of drugs available for cancer treatment, it’s inevitable to miss fact that majority of anticancer drugs are sourced either directly from natural bioactive compounds or after structural optimization of natural compound. We can say that nature holds bounty of medicinal compounds, and onus is on us to discover and explore their possible medicinal applications. Usage of compounds from natural sources especially plant based can be dated back to possibly even before dawn of civilization. Most of the chemotherapeutic drugs are also derived from natural bioactive compounds. Research effort during past several decades has been dedicated on screening of bioactives from natural sources, with more focus on easily available resources like terrestrial fauna and flora. However, big pharmaceutical companies have diverted their focus from natural compound based discovery most probably to avoid possible patent conflicts. ‘