Micro B3 at the Submariner Blue Biotechnology Cooperation Event (Kiel, Germany)

 



During the Submariner Blue Biotechnology Cooperation Event Johanna Wesnigk (EMPA, Germany) presented the Micro B3 project and another EU-project she is involved in, called Marine Genomics for Users (MG4U).  She gave a talk on “Knowledge transfer from environmental genomic science to marine biotechnology – big data, big challenges", which was well received and led to many questions. It focused on the challenges posed by exponentially increasing genomic sequence data  for marine organisms and metagenomic data sets. While costs for the sequencing are decreasing, it still constitutes a major effort to obtain and maintain samples containing underutilized information for novel functions and promising variety of  enzymes. Therefore cooperation between science and industry is necessary, which will be done within both projects presented. Especially MG4U invites beta users for its knowledge output database as well as interested participants to sessions at industry conventions, like BioMarine and ACHEMA, both held in 2012, and to training courses.



 

Fernando de la Calle (PharmaMar, Spain) gave a talk with the title: “Marine biodiversity as source of new anticancer compounds - The experience of PharmaMar “. It illustrated in detail how to utilise  the unique evolutionary development of marine organisms which has equipped many of them with pharmacologically interesting mechanisms for survival, or with complex biological and chemical mechanisms for defence, attack, signalling, etc.. These mechanisms can be based on novel chemical structures which often result in new modes of action. This opens up research and application potential of new ways to treat cancer and other diseases. In addition to Yondelis, (PharmaMar’s first marketed marine-derived product for the treatment of soft tissue sarcomas and some types of ovarian cancer), the company also has further five  marine-derived products in clinical trials and a large pipeline of potential new drugs in diverse testing stages. Some of the innovative developments will be done in the context of three EU-projects PharmaMar is involved in: MAMBA, Micro B3 and MACUMBA.