Endangered PHL coral reefs could be the source of next-gen medicines

The next generation of medicines could come from coral reefs, which are an abundant but endangered resource in Philippine waters.

 

“The sky is the limit,” said Dr. Deborah Gochfeld, a senior research scientist at the National Center for Natural Products Research of the University of Mississippi, in an e-mail interview.  

 

“The oceans have a much broader diversity of chemical structures than are found in plants – which include uses for cancer, heart disease, and infections, among others – so it is likely that marine animals will include all of these options and more,” she pointed out.

 

Most of these marine resources thrive in ecologically fragile coral reefs, touted to be the rainforests of the sea.

 

Medicines from coral

 

“Many coral reef species produce chemicals like histamines and antibiotics used in medicine and science,” reports The Nature Conservancy, an organization whose mission is to preserve plants, animals and natural communities by protecting the lands and waters needed for their survival.

 

According to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), “Coral reefs plants and animals are important sources of new medicines being developed to treat cancer, arthritis, human bacterial infections, heart disease, viruses, and other diseases.”

 

The NOAA believes that some coral reef organisms can “produce powerful chemicals to fend off attackers, and scientists continue to research the medicinal potential of these substances.”

 

Coral reefs are one of the most productive and biologically rich ecosystems on earth.  They extend across about 250,000 square kilometers of the ocean – less than one-tenth of one percent of the marine environment – yet they may be home to 25 percent of all known marine species.

 

“About 4,000 coral reef-associated fish species and 800 species of reef-building corals have been described to date, though these numbers are dwarfed by the great diversity of other marine species associated with coral reefs, including sponges, urchins, crustaceans, mollusks, and many more,” notes “Reefs at Risk Revisited in the Coral Triangle.” 

 

New and traditional remedies

 

For centuries, coastal communities have used reef plants and animals for their medicinal properties. In the Philippines, for instance, giant clams are eaten as a malaria treatment.

 

In China and Taiwan, tonics and medicines derived from seahorse extracts are used to treat a wide range of ailments, including sexual disorders, respiratory and circulatory problems, kidney and liver diseases, throat infections, skin ailments, and pain.

 

In Japan’s reefs – one of the most studied coral coasts in the world – there is a chemical called kainic acid, which is used as a diagnostic chemical to investigate Huntington’s chorea, a rare but fatal disease of the nervous system.  Sea whips, a type of sot coral found throughout the Caribbean may hold the key to promising new painkillers.

 

Other coral chemicals have proved useful in research on arthritis and asthma.  In Australia, for example, researchers have developed a sun cream for a coral chemical that contains a natural “factor 50” sun block.

 

Also, the porous limestone skeleton of coral is now being tested as bone grafts in humans. 

 

In an article that appeared in “Reef Research,” Dr. Patrick Colin, a marine biologist, clearly described the hopes that had led him to spend the 1990s collecting marine samples in the Pacific for the US National Cancer Institute (NCI). 

 

“Over the years, the NCI has been screening terrestrial plants and marine organisms worldwide for bioactivity against cancer and Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS), and has come up with a number of hot prospects, a number of which are in clinical trials,” Dr. Colin wrote.

 

Marine drugs

 

Since the mid-1970s, private and government-funded institutions from the United States and other industrialized countries have devoted varying levels of effort to the discovery of marine-derived pharmaceuticals.

 

“I think there are about a dozen marine drugs in early clinical development (that is, Phase 1 and Phase 2 human trials) that show good promise in cancer assays,” said Dr. Gochfeld.  “Many more are being studied at the level of academic institutions like ours – but still years away from development, but with exciting potential.”

 

Unfortunately, coral reefs, which have been described as “Eden beneath the waves,” are on the verge of extinction. In the Philippines, coral reefs deemed to be in “poor” condition rose from 33 per cent in the 1980s to 40 per cent in the most recent estimates, according to Dr. Theresa Mundita Lim, director of the Protected Areas and Wildlife Bureau (PAWB).

 

Coral reefs that are in ‘excellent’ condition also further reduced to one per cent from the already dismal statistics of five per cent in the 1980s, the PAWB head said.

 

Dwindling Philippine reefs

 

“The Philippines has 22,500 square kilometers of coral reef area, which represents 9 percent of the global total, making it the country with the third-largest reef area in the world (after Australia and Indonesia),” noted “Reefs at Risk Revisited in the Coral Triangle.”

 

The Philippines is home to 464 species of hard corals. Once these coral reefs are gone, they would be lost forever – including those that can serve as sources of medicines.  

 

“The loss of biodiversity represents lost potential medicines (as well as many other biotechnology products that enhance our lives),” pointed out Dr. Gochfeld.  “The alarming loss of coral reefs in recent years includes unestimated loss of species that could one day save lives from malaria, cancer, HIV, and many other infectious diseases.” —TJD, GMA News