The future of our pharmaceuticals are from down under.... the surface of course!
Coral reefs are the new tropical rainforests when it comes to drug research. When you think about it, how else do you protect yourself when you are a sea sponge, you can't move, don't have any spines or spikes and are free game for any of the thousands of species living nearby? Well chemistry of course! Turns out some of this chemistry may help with the future of our pharmaceuticals!
And then to our crabbiest ally that you never knew about! The fact that we rely on Horseshoe crab blood to test all of our internal medical devices and vaccines is stunning! And the fact that we are affecting the environment in such a drastic fashion yet have a synthetic alternative that we can turn to is wild. Yet we still remain crab vampires in the name of healthcare!
For more information on the future of drugs from the sea and Dr. Marc Slattery's research click here. To watch his Ted talk "Drugs from the Sea: What do we lose when Coral reefs die?" click here.
For more information about the Horseshoe Crab Recovery Coalition Click here. Check out Dr. Larry Niles blog about his work right here.
The ABP is establishing a conservation Aquarium in the Prairies to help tell the Story of Water.
Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
David Evans (00:04):
I'm sorry, bear with me this podcast is going to
start on a very unusual note,HIV, leukemia, lymphoma, lung,
pancreatic and breast cancer,herpes, and Ebola. So bizarrely,
this is not only a list ofviruses and cancers and diseases
that you would hope to avoid.
But all of these diseases alsohave one thing in common. They
(00:27):
can all be treated by compoundsthat are found in the same
organism naturally occurring.
Now, you're probably thinking,Well, that's pretty crazy.
There's probably some type oftree in the Amazon, we're always
hearing about how that's goingto be the new place where all of
our future drugs will come from.
But I bet you've guessed alreadythat based on the episode topic,
(00:48):
the organism we're talkingabout, doesn't live on land, and
it doesn't live in the Amazon.
But it does live underwater.
Alright, ladies and gentlemen,drumroll please. It is a bland
looking sponge from theCaribbean. Yes, you heard that
correctly. A sponge from theocean provided the chemical
(01:14):
compounds that we use now totreat cancers and viruses, and
many other different diseases.
Now, I'm really looking at apicture of it right now. And it
doesn't look like anythingthat's very interesting. You
wouldn't really stop to thinktwice about it if you're scuba
diving or snorkeling past it.
But this bunch, oh, gosh, I haveto pronounce it now. Tech Tip to
(01:34):
thigh krypter. I don't know ifthat's right. Or it also goes by
crypto Theca. Which is wayeasier to say. This one species
of sponge has made it possiblefor us to make huge advancements
in treatments of different virusand cancer diseases. And it's
only one sponge. Now imagine theworld is 70% oceans. How much
(01:56):
have we actually explored it?
And what else is there for us todiscover? In this episode, we
dive into the topics of how wealready use the oceans for our
own health care purposes. Andwhat possibilities are there
still in the ocean that we haveyet to discover?
(02:22):
That sir nippy Oh me too low in02. Marry a cheap, Chinese way.
(02:49):
Why natural? Water we doing? Andhow can we do better? Your one
stop shop for everything waterrelated from discussing water,
its use in the organisms thatdepend on it for all the global
(03:09):
issues that you really neverknew all had to do with water.
I'm your host, David Evans fromthe aquatic biosphere project.
And I just want to ask yousomething. What are we doing?
And how can we do better?
(03:40):
About 33% of the drugs that weuse today in modern health care
come from natural sources. Onegood example of this is
morphine. Morphine naturallyoccurs in the poppy family, and
also can be found in the familyof hops and mulberry trees. We
even produce it in our ownbodies, but just a very low
concentration, so you get moreof it from the poppy family. The
(04:01):
next 33% of drugs were inspiredby nature, so they occur
naturally, but they need alittle bit of tweaking to have
peak performance in the humanbody. A good example of this is
how we got aspirin from the barkof the weeping willow tree.
willow bark has been used as amedicine for over 3500 years.
willow bark contains the activecompound called salicin. And
(04:23):
while salicin will still giveyou the similar effects of
aspirin, it'll give you a reallyirritated stomach. So in 1898, I
see the Salic acid wassynthesized as a more stomach
friendly version of salicin. Andthat's the aspirin that we still
use to this day. The final thirdof drugs on the market is
looking at the problemcompletely differently. It's
(04:44):
looking at where's the problem?
And what can I create tospecifically addressed those
receptors in the body or thoseeffects in the body? So with all
of that in mind, about twothirds of all of the drugs that
we use to this day, are eitherinspired by or come directly
from nature. As a species, we'vebeen exploring our terrestrial
ecosystems for 1000s of years,discovering what can cure what,
(05:07):
but how long have we actuallybeen exploring underwater? Over
80% of the total biodiversity,all of the species in the world
exists in our oceans. Andspecifically, most of them are
in coral reefs. So the questionis, how do you go from the coral
reef to the pharmacy?
Dr. Marc Slattery, Univer (05:27):
Sure.
So I'm Mark Slattery, I work atthe University of Mississippi
and the School of Pharmacy,which is funny, because I'm
actually a classically trainedmarine ecologist, my research
interests while they've been oncoral reefs for a number of
years, but more specifically,I'm interested in the chemicals
that marine organisms produceand why they produce them. And
as an ecologist, I'm moreinterested in the specifics of
(05:48):
how they work for the organismthat's using them, the School of
Pharmacy, sort of recognize thatthe work I was doing had some
application to drug discoverydrugs from the sea. And so
that's sort of become asecondary interest of mine over
the years, and I got that that'swhat we'll be talking about a
little more today, I'm sort ofin the group that is, let's go
to nature. And let's see whatnature tells us. And again, as a
(06:11):
chemical ecologist, I recognizethat there's things the animals
are teaching us. So a lot ofthese compounds are coming from
organisms that are attached tothe bottom, like sponges and
soft corals and things thatcan't run away. I mean, in a,
you know, terrestrial system,you know, you have animals that
(06:31):
run away from predators or getaway from competitors, all sorts
of situations. But if you'restuck in one place, and you
don't have like armor orsomething to protect you, then
oftentimes you got to producechemistry to deal with your
situation. For instance, if it'sa feeding deterrent compound,
there's something nasty there.
(06:53):
And then we take it into the laband say, Well, you know, that
didn't taste very good, maybethat'll have some activity. More
recently, my wife and I aredealing with with issues and
coral diseases. And we recognizethat these are animals that have
primitive immune systems. And soone of the ways they dealt with
diseases, much like we do, theirimmune system is chemistry. And
(07:15):
so we say, well, you know, we'reout on the reef, and we're
seeing, you know, thisindividuals disease, this
individuals disease, and thisone right beside it isn't, isn't
picking up the disease, and whatis it about it? Well, it's
producing more chemistry. And sowe'll go in and find the
compounds that are knocking outthose diseases and say, Okay,
well, that knocks out a diseaseand a quarrel, maybe it'll lock
(07:39):
out or disease. And in a humanbeing, we've taken those
approaches just going in andsort of looking at the
environment and, and sort ofparsing out what the environment
is telling us. That's ourapproach with chemistry in the
sea.
David Evans (07:54):
It's weird to think of getting medicines from a
sponge who lives in a pineappleunder the sea. Sorry, I could
not resist getting drugs from asponge who lives at the bottom
of the ocean, because ourspecies are just so different.
But it makes sense to getchemistry from organisms that
can't run away. They don't havebig teeth, they don't have big
(08:15):
spines, they can't do anythingreally, other than make
chemicals. I mean, an example ofchemical warfare on land is
skunks. No one wants to messwith a skunk. No one wants to
get sprayed. So same goesunderwater. So I'm really
curious, is this a new field?
Are we just starting to dip ourtoes into the ocean per se? On
what drug possibilities theremight be out there? Or is this
(08:38):
something we've been lookinginto for a long time? We know
quite a bit about and we're, wehave a number of drugs already
on the market.
Dr. Marc Slattery, Univer (08:47):
Yeah.
So let me back up and say thatwe're still sort of in our
infancy relative to drugdiscovery from the seas. Okay.
And that's because I mean, scubadiving started with Jacques
Cousteau, what, you know, 5080years ago, something like that.
So we've had far less time doingresearch in the oceans than we
have in tropical rainforest, andso on and so forth. So with that
(09:09):
caveat, there are a fewexamples. But there certainly
aren't as many examples. If youlook in the ancient literature
about 3000 years BC in China,they were actually taxing the
public for a medicine from thesea. And we don't know what that
medicine is. It's just writtenup that way. So people have been
looking at the oceans as asource of even drugs for you
(09:31):
know, the better part of 5000years now, which is pretty
pretty amazing. When you thinkabout it, you know, whereas
tropical rainforest indigenouspeople have utilized their
plants for drugs sources, peoplewere recognizing there's things
to deal with in the ocean. Weknow more specifically a few 100
years ago that ancient Hawaiiansactually used to dip their
(09:55):
spears into tide pools into an Xorganism looks a lot like an
anemone. It's called palettepoly Thoa that produces a toxin
really strong toxin called polytoxin. And they used it much the
same way that indigenousrainforest tribes use poison
dart frog secretions to paralyzetheir prey. And so there was a
(10:17):
recognition that there issomething powerful in in these
animals that is toxic, and isultimately might become a source
of a plant. So there's been someuse of the oceans over the years
with what we now recognizes as achemical source. And what the
1950s was a first example ofsomebody who actually extracted
a sponge and had an ame cryptoTheca, because it was very
(10:42):
cryptic, it actually lives inthe sand grains and such. And he
isolated two compounds that wereknown as era a and era C. And
then again, like I mentioned,using them as sort of
inspiration. He then went to thelab and sort of built his own
versions of those, one of thembecame an antiviral compound
(11:04):
used, I think, for herpesviruses, and the other one
became sort of an anti cancercompound that was sort of the
beginning of, of drugs from thesea, as it were. And around that
time, there were severalchemists who were starting to go
in and make collections and, anddrag out compounds. And on
average, about 5000 compoundsevery year are found mostly from
(11:30):
sponges, sponges seem to be avery rich source of compounds.
David Evans (11:38):
So once these compounds are isolated, so we
have the specimen that producesthis compound, we're able to
isolate it, then we can bring itback to a lab, and we can run it
through a bio assay. So whatthis means is we can test to see
if this will fight against avirus or fight against cancer
forming agent. So now we'recollecting 5000 different
(12:00):
compounds every year. So what'sthe next step for these
potential drugs? How do they gofrom the bio assays to
eventually onto our pharmacyshelves? And what are we already
using that we may not knowactually comes from the sea.
Dr. Marc Slattery, Un (12:13):
Nowadays, there's probably a half a dozen
compounds that are actuallyworldwide being used as drugs.
Not all of them are here in theUnited States. I think the
United States only has one thathas been actually approved
through clinical trials andwhatever else and that's
something that comes from thecone snail. Oh,
David Evans (12:37):
sorry, sorry, sorry, the cone snail is no joke
had to jump in. So they havethese beautiful shells. There's
lots of different species. Theproblem is, they have these
hypodermic like needles in theirmouths, that if you pick it up,
it might just Dart that needleinto you, and inject its venom.
Now, some of the venom isn't asbad. It depends on the species,
(12:57):
but some goes from a beasting upto being enough to actually kill
you. So take a look at theseshells online. They're gorgeous
shells. And remember that nexttime you go to the beach, don't
pick up every shell you see.
Sorry, right back to you, Mark.
Dr. Marc Slattery, Universi (13:11):
Oh, it's again, a toxin. It's used
by the cones to paralyze theirprey, and it goes by the name
Xin Kona tide, it's used inmedicine as a painkiller. It's
actually 1000 times morepowerful than morphine. It
doesn't have the addictiveness.
So it's a very, very goodcompound for pain relief. It's
typically given only in ahospital setting, it has to
(13:35):
actually go into the spine. Andso it's not something that you
get on your shelves per se, butit is a very powerful and
important tool in surgery. Butthe other compounds that are out
there in different countries,there's one that comes from a
toolkit, called a kind of sit inthat is an anti cancer agent.
Oh,
David Evans (13:55):
sorry. Another fun fact with Dave So tunicates,
otherwise known as sea squirtsgroup of marine animals, they
spend most of their livesattached to docks, or rocks or
undersides of boats. And theydon't really look like much they
look like a glob a colored blob,but they're about 2.5
centimeters. And they mostlylook like they're some type of
(14:15):
sponge. But funnily enough,they're actually closer related
to humans than they are to otherinvertebrates. Yeah, they're
closely related to the Core Datafamily, so everything with a
spinal cord, who knew okay,sorry, back to you, Mark. My
apologies.
Dr. Marc Slattery, Universi (14:30):
Oh, oh, a really interesting one
that's out there is somethingcalled suitor terrorists and it
comes from a gorgonian or like asea fan that occurs in the
Caribbean. It's actually an antiinflammatory agent, but it's
actually being used in EsteeLauder resilience. So
apparently, the compound ofinterest in that that I guess,
(14:53):
makes your face better orwhatever, gave sort of an
inflammation response. So youpeople's faces would kind of get
read and stuff like this. Sothey actually added some of this
pseudo terrorists in in there toactually knock down the
inflammation response toeverything else that was in the,
in the compounds that's beingused. So there's there's some
(15:14):
interesting leads out there isinteresting history of testing
these strings through time,we're still getting there. I'm
not sure if I answered yourearlier question on how a drug
actually gets to market. But thereality is, is, you know, it's
often somewhere in theneighborhood of 10 to 20 years
to get through the three phasesof clinical trials, because
(15:35):
classical clinical trials, youknow, you might get 10,000
People with the drug, but thenyou're gonna want to watch him
for four or five or six years tosee what any long term side
effects are. And so drugdiscovery efforts can take quite
a while the part that I met inwhich is in the very beginning,
where you grab something fromthe field, and you start the
process in the lab, that mightbe a year or two, but at some
(15:57):
point, we're going to have topass it off to the sort of the
pharmaceutical industry. And forevery, usually 1000 leads that
you put into the pipeline,you're lucky if you get one out.
So it is a numbers game. And sothen if you sort of look at the
number of years that we've beendoing drug discovery in the
ocean, and you map that out, itsort of makes sense that we're
(16:18):
only at about five or 10 drugleads at this point. But I
guarantee you, there are severalin the pipeline right now that
are doing pretty well, in phaseone, phase two, and I predict
that probably in the next, youknow, three to five years, we'll
probably see a doubling if notmore, in terms of drugs from the
city.
David Evans (16:40):
So maybe sooner rather than later, we will all
need to be thanking that littlesponge who lives in a pineapple
under the sea. Now, this got meto thinking, we have all of
these marine organisms that areliving their lives in these
coral reefs. And suddenly, weput a price tag on their head,
suddenly, they're reallyimportant for this drug that
(17:01):
needs to be out there. So it cancure cancer for everyone around
the world. How are we going toregulate this? And what are we
going to be able to do to makesure that there's a sustainable
population of them, not only sothat they're out there in the
wild, but also so that we canmake sure that we have enough to
be able to provide as medicationfor ourselves.
Dr. Marc Slattery, University (17:23):
I guess one of the things I should
point out, though, is since weare talking about coral reefs,
and sort of their importance, isthe issue of the sustainability
of these drugs from the sea. Sofor instance, when you're
leaving a coral reef, one of thereasons there's so much
biodiversity, there's similarbiomass to what you have sort of
in the kelp forests ofCalifornia, where there they
(17:45):
only have, you know, a fractionof the number of species. So you
might have more species on coralreefs, but you have fewer
individuals. And so if oneparticular individual, whether
that's a sponge, or a coral, ornew to Brank, or something is
providing that drug, then yourun into an issue of supply.
Okay, you can't just go out andsort of rape and pillage to get
(18:08):
enough because there just isn'tenough there. In fact, to enter
clinical trials, you're requiredto produce one kilogram of the
chemical that's going to be usedin the studies and kilogram
while, that doesn't seem like alot, you know, what we're
getting out of these spongesmight be, you know, micro grams,
(18:29):
or PICO grams. So you're talkingabout from any given individual,
you know, scaling that up,you're talking about 1000s, if
not 10s of 1000s of individualsto produce that amount of
chemistry. So this has becomesort of the big challenge of how
do you make up that difference.
So one of the reasons why thechemists are taking sort of
their lead from the chemistrythey find in the oceans, and
(18:50):
then sort of developing it alongin the labs by themselves,
because you can do syntheticchemistry and produce more of
it. It's awful and costlyprocess, but it can be done. But
there are a couple of otheroptions that are available.
There's aquaculture, there wassomething that was incredibly
important to have, you couldactually grow it and to see
farming, you know, they farm alot of terrestrial drugs and
(19:13):
such from plants are beingfarmed, and then taken into a
lab and extracted and used andso there is aquaculture for fish
that we eat. And so one couldarguably do that approach for
these ones that are importantfor drugs. Another is the
molecular biology era, we nowhave the opportunity to go in
(19:33):
and pull out the genes that areresponsible for the production
and particular chemistry andthat's, I don't want this to
come off as like, well that'ssomething we can just do. I mean
it's not not at the age ofJurassic Park yet. We want to
sort of write knocking on thedoors and there are challenges
to pulling genes out puttingthem into a another animal and
(19:56):
telling it to over produce thatparticular compound, but they're
not insurmountable. And soagain, we often archive the
genome of any individual thatwe're working with, with the
understanding that we can'tnecessarily do it today. But
maybe in the next couple ofyears, we're going to be at the
point where that is more of areality than it was certainly
(20:17):
when I started as a grad studentin this business. So yeah, there
are opportunities to besustainable in this drug
discovery effort as well.
David Evans (20:30):
Where there's a will, there's a way, but we'll
also need to make sure thatthere are sustainability markers
with these products and withthese drugs, we need to make
sure that we're beingsustainable with how we're
harvesting natural resources.
Now, I realize we've beenspeaking for 20 minutes about
drugs only. But there's so manyother medical innovations that
come from the seat. Forinstance, there's research going
(20:54):
on to look at how clams andoysters can attach themselves to
rock so that they don't getswept away out to sea during
crashing waves and sweepingtides. And looking at if we can
recreate these glues andattachments, that they are able
to create themselves so that wecan close wounds a lot easier
and safer, and that'llbiodegrade over time. And
(21:16):
there's many medical marvelsthat we're already using. So I'd
like to introduce the neweststar of the show. This organism
has been used in the biomedicalindustry for a very long time, I
can almost guarantee you most ofyou listening to this podcast,
will never have heard of thisspecies, let alone would be able
to identify it if you saw it.
(21:36):
But I can guarantee you that atleast one person that you know,
has had their life impactedbecause of the use of this
organism in the biomedicalindustry. This is a story about
sustainability, about ecosystemcollapse about large, large
pharmaceutical companies, andalso a ragtag group of concerned
citizens, scientists,pharmacists, fishermen, all
(22:00):
banding together to try toswitch to a more sustainable
synthetic alternative. Ladiesand gentlemen, the horseshoe
crab.
Dr. Larry Niles, Horsesho (22:09):
First of all, there are 425 million
year old species. So they'vebeen around the block, the goal
here isn't to save the crabsbecause you know, they're going
to be here long after humans arelost. So the goal is to try to
build up the populations to makethem more robust. So the crabs
(22:29):
are, you know, roughly aboutdish size, the males are smaller
females could get to the size ofa baseball home plate, every
medical product drugs, hipimplants, pacemakers, whatever
are tested with a biochemicalfrom horseshoe crab blood called
(22:49):
lysate. So what it does is thedrug companies have created a
testing assay that allows themto determine if there's any
contaminant in all the variouscomponents of drugs, and then
they test them in their finaldevelopment so that the public
can be assured that there's nocontamination in these drugs or
(23:11):
in whatever device going intoyour body. Previously, they used
rabbits that test. So that'scruel, obviously cruel. And so
this is a innovation for sure.
The problem now is that thepeople who are doing the
bleeding that are basically justafter profit, they bleed them
for eight minutes. So they putthem up on a spike into the
(23:33):
heart, and they bleed them asmuch as they'll bleed for eight
minutes. Killing they say 15%,peer reviewed replications a
30%. But it could be morebecause an eight minute bleed.
So a small crowd might bleed 30%of their blood, whereas a bigger
female could lead up to halftheir blood volume. And so then
(23:57):
they just let them go.
David Evans (24:02):
Well, I know the slogan is blood, it's in you to
give, but this is going a littlebit far. This is Dr. Larry
Niles. He is an ecologist whoused to be the head of the
Endangered Species Program forNew Jersey. He is now a big part
of the horseshoe crab recoverycoalition. And this might be
strange because he's very much abird guy. But as he likes to say
(24:24):
everything that goes on withbirds comes back to horseshoe
crabs along the easternseaboard, especially if you're
somewhere near Delaware Bay.
Dr. Larry Niles, Horse (24:33):
Delaware Bay is one of the top world stop
overs for Arctic nestingshorebirds who make these
dramatically long distancemigrations down to turtle flay
go 10,000 mile journey on theirway back they have to cross the
ocean to get back to NorthAmerica. deplete all their
(24:54):
resources because they're flyingup there seven days at a time
and then they arrive in DelawareBay. They arrived just as
horseshoe crabs start spawningon the bay beaches. They lay
pony eggs in clusters about sixinches deep. But there's so many
crabs that after a certainamount of spawning, every new
(25:14):
crab that comes in to lay eggsdigs up, the eggs have another
crab, so they come up to thesurface. And in that way the
birds can eat them, the birdsquickly gain weight on them at a
time in spring, when all thenatural resources are at their
lowest level. These eggs allowthem to build weight at the
highest rates in the world veryquickly, they get up to the
(25:37):
weight that they need to go onto the Arctic, where they have
enough fat that they can startnesting and lay eggs. And then
by the time the chicks hatch,the Arctic is thawed. And then
you know, life goes on. Pullingout the horseshoe crab block was
a significant ecological actionthat nobody even realized
(25:58):
because it was pulled out beforeanyone knew of the value. Like
even here in Delaware Bay. Thecrabs spawn was amazing. I have
a 1986 video of crabs mining,the harvest of horseshoe crabs
was only maybe 100,000 A year orso in Delaware Bay. And then
(26:20):
within a few years, it went upto 2.5 million. And it was
because they wanted bait for aconch fishery. And very quickly,
they the egg densities onDelaware Bay went from like
50,000 eggs per square meter. Onthe surface, it went as low as
7000. Right now it's about10,000. But in 1986, could see
(26:46):
in this video that there waswind rows of eggs. So it wasn't
like there was an egg here, likethere. It was piles of eggs
pushed up by the waves, and allof that was going into the sea,
and birds, fish crabs, like allthe elements of productivity
that we enjoy. We're all like,you know, just knocked out at
(27:07):
the knees. Nobody documentedthese values before it occurred.
And then we were left withtrying to restore it after it
was already done. And so that'swhere most of the other
horseshoe crab populations arenow. And, you know, I have to
(27:28):
say it's where a lot of naturalresources are right now.
David Evans (27:33):
The harvest of horseshoe crabs has really
affected pretty much everywherein North America, from the
shorebirds in the Arctic thatneed that little pick me up
snack on their way up north. Allof those sport fisheries and
commercial fisheries areimpacted because they don't have
that primary productivity, thoseeggs just aren't there to feed
the fish when they need it.
Horseshoe crabs are what we calla keystone species. So when this
(27:53):
species is actually taken out ofthe system, no more horseshoe
crabs, it affects everythingelse, the ecosystem really
suffers. So what's actuallyhappening to the horseshoe crab
population, not only are theybeing harvested so that we can
collect their blood, but they'realso being harvested so that we
can use them as bait to catchmore bait so that we can catch
(28:15):
even more fish from the ocean.
Yes, there's a huge industryaround just using horseshoe
crabs as bait. Now, that's a bigproblem in itself. But at least
the bleeding. Isn't theresomething we can do. Turns out
we've already created asynthetic alternative. So why
(28:37):
are we still bleeding crabs?
Dr. Larry Niles, Horseshoe (28:39):
That synthetic was actually developed
like over 10 years ago, and thenone of the bleeding companies
bought the patent did nothing.
So essentially kept it out ofthe market. The patent expired
several years ago. And so sincethen, drug companies like Eli
Lilly have already used thesynthetic for both their product
development and for finalproduct testing drug company,
(29:02):
Pfizer just did a head to headtest and found no differences
but all the other leadingcompanies have synthetic
alternatives. One company thatdoes most of the bleeding
Charles River associates, itcurrently doesn't have synthetic
alternatives developed so theychallenged the efficacy of the
synthetic and published thepaper that said that they were
(29:26):
not equivalent to they did atest. But groups within our
coalition like Physicians forResponsible Medicine and the
companies that are involvedbiome Are you is going along
with Eli Lilly. It basicallywent to work and found that
Charles River had deliberatelymanipulated by starting with
(29:47):
something called Dirty waterwhich is water that includes a
contaminant that they knew thesynthetic wouldn't detect. But
now no drug company uses dirtywater. So is a artificial
restriction that led the FDA andthe US Pharmacopoeia to
essentially reverse theirearlier positions. So right now,
(30:11):
it's in that period of flux. Theway it looks is because of
Pfizer's new data, and becauseof the influence of the drug
companies and our influence,because the other side of the
equation here is that thepharmaceutical companies have
(30:32):
committed to not using animaltesting if they don't have to.
And so this is pitting themagainst that ideal. I hope that
it'll change this year.
David Evans (30:48):
Did you get all of that? All right, so quick recap.
That was a lot of information.
So we have this syntheticversion of horseshoe crab blood
that basically, we think can doexactly what the horseshoe crab
blood does. And we don't have todrain the blood from horseshoe
crabs, somewhere along DelawareBay. Perfect. This makes a lot
of sense, until you get largeorganizations involved that make
(31:12):
a lot of money by collectingthese horseshoe crabs, bleeding
them out and selling theirblood. So there might be
incentives to skew the resultsof their tests. And that's what
the horseshoe crab recoverycoalition thinks might be
happening. So they've beenrunning their own tests, the
members of the drug companiesthat are part of the horseshoe
crab recovery coalition aretrying to prove that the
(31:33):
synthetic version is just asgood as the horseshoe crab blood
version. Now, the FDA has tomake a decision on whether or
not horseshoe crab blood and thesynthetic are comparable, and we
can make the switch to syntheticfully. The problem is, this is
too important to test to makeany mistakes, we need to be
fully sure, and dot all of ouri's and cross all of our T's
(31:56):
before making the switch. But ifthere's a team that can get this
done, the horseshoe crabrecovery coalition, like Asha
said that so many times now youmust be so annoyed with me. They
are the team to do it, becausethey are a huge group from very
diverse backgrounds. And wellmight as well hear from the
expert. So when
Dr. Larry Niles, Horseshoe C (32:18):
we first started out, we thought,
you know, we bind together theusual players, you know,
conservation group, and we didlike National Wildlife
Federation, National Audubonfenders for wildlife, they're
all part of the coalition. Butsee, because we're talking about
a valuable biochemical. It alsobrings in Eli Lilly, the drug
(32:39):
companies and PhysiciansCommittee for a Responsible
Medicine is part of thecoalition. But we also have
groups like Manhattan defenders,and sport fishing guides
association. So you know, whatwe're doing is binding together
a coalition that sort ofaddresses this very difficult
(33:00):
conservation problem. It's onethat plagues every natural
resource right now, whether it'sforestry or agriculture industry
is consuming, not just the sortof top level product of a
system, they're commodifyingevery layer of that system so
that they're basically removingall the productivity from
(33:21):
ecosystems. And, you know, ourwhole climate change initiative
depends on functioningecosystems. So you can't rely on
the normal method, a bunch ofconservation groups get together
and say, This is what it shouldbe. This is more like, let's all
work together to try to figureout how we can solve
David Evans (33:42):
it almost sounds like a joke of a bird biologist
at sports, Fisher andpharmaceutical representative
walk into a bar or somethinglike that. It just, it seems
like a weird, a weird group ofpeople that work together. All
jokes aside, they're doing greatwork. And I'm so excited to see
(34:03):
where this goes. One of the mainmessages that I got both from
Dr. Mark Slattery and Dr. LarryNiles, was about sustainability.
So Dr. Mark Slattery, can youjust finish it off with why we
should care about preserving ourcoral reef ecosystems?
Dr. Marc Slattery, Universit (34:21):
So that's a great issue. And I've
I've had long discussions withother individuals, including my
own family who look at coralreefs, as you know, well, why
are we spending money to savethem when we've got people that
are homeless, you know, drugsfrom the sea. This is certainly
something that people can gettheir heads around if we find a
(34:42):
new drug if we cure cancer orsomething that has huge
implications for society as awhole. And so I'm quite happy to
wave the flag for drugdiscovery, if it's going to help
save coral reefs for futuregenerations.
David Evans (35:02):
Thanks for listening to today's episode all
about drugs from the see what wecan get for the future of
medicine from our oceans andfreshwater systems. I'm your
host, David Evans. And I wouldjust love to thank all of the
guests on today's episode. Sostarting at the first speaker,
Dr. Mark Slattery from theUniversity of Mississippi. To
find out more about Dr. Mark'swork, I couldn't find a specific
(35:23):
website for him, but I'll leavelinks for the pharmacology
department at Ole Miss, and alsoto his TED talk on YouTube, all
about drugs from the sea. Andalso, I'd love to thank Dr.
Larry nails from the horseshoecrab recovery coalition. Last
time, I need to say that you canfind out more about their work
at HS crab recovery.org. AndI'll leave a link for his own
(35:44):
website as well where you cankeep up to date with what's
going on in the crab world andin the bird world. And
basically, everything you needto know about Delaware Bay, be
sure to check out the show notesas I'll leave links for all of
these plus lots of otherinformation, just in case this
just whet your palate and youcan't wait to learn more. Be
sure to check out the shownotes. It'll all be there and
(36:06):
get excited the deep diveepisode with both Dr. Mark
Slattery and Dr. Larry Nileswill be coming out in the next
couple of weeks, so make sureyou are subscribed so that you
don't miss any of theseepisodes. I'm the host and
producer David Evans. And I justlike to thank the rest of the
team specifically Paul Polman,Lee Burton, and the rest of the
aquatic biosphere board. Thanksfor all of your help. And to
(36:27):
learn more about the aquaticbiosphere project and what we're
doing right here in Albertatelling the story of water, you
can check us out at aquaticbiosphere.ca. And we also have
launched our new media company,a b n aquatic biosphere network
that you can find that thepublic place dot online and
search for the aquatic biospherenetwork channel, where we will
(36:50):
actually be posting all of thevideo episodes that we're going
to be creating this year. Sotune in. They will be out for
the next little while, but veryexcited to start sharing video
content as well of ourinterviews. If you have any
questions or comments about theshow, we'd love to hear them.
Email us at conservation ataquatic biosphere.org. Please
(37:11):
don't forget to like, share andsubscribe. Leave us a review. It
really helps us out. Thanks andit's been a splash
I'm sorry, bear with me this podcast is going to
start on a very unusual note,HIV, leukemia, lymphoma, lung,
pancreatic and breast cancer,herpes, and Ebola. So bizarrely,
this is not only a list ofviruses and cancers and diseases
that you would hope to avoid.
But all of these diseases alsohave one thing in common. They
(00:27):
can all be treated by compoundsthat are found in the same
organism naturally occurring.
Now, you're probably thinking,Well, that's pretty crazy.
There's probably some type oftree in the Amazon, we're always
hearing about how that's goingto be the new place where all of
our future drugs will come from.
But I bet you've guessed alreadythat based on the episode topic,
(00:48):
the organism we're talkingabout, doesn't live on land, and
it doesn't live in the Amazon.
But it does live underwater.
Alright, ladies and gentlemen,drumroll please. It is a bland
looking sponge from theCaribbean. Yes, you heard that
correctly. A sponge from theocean provided the chemical
(01:14):
compounds that we use now totreat cancers and viruses, and
many other different diseases.
Now, I'm really looking at apicture of it right now. And it
doesn't look like anythingthat's very interesting. You
wouldn't really stop to thinktwice about it if you're scuba
diving or snorkeling past it.
But this bunch, oh, gosh, I haveto pronounce it now. Tech Tip to
(01:34):
thigh krypter. I don't know ifthat's right. Or it also goes by
crypto Theca. Which is wayeasier to say. This one species
of sponge has made it possiblefor us to make huge advancements
in treatments of different virusand cancer diseases. And it's
only one sponge. Now imagine theworld is 70% oceans. How much
(01:56):
have we actually explored it?
And what else is there for us todiscover? In this episode, we
dive into the topics of how wealready use the oceans for our
own health care purposes. Andwhat possibilities are there
still in the ocean that we haveyet to discover?
(02:22):
That sir nippy Oh me too low in02. Marry a cheap, Chinese way.
(02:49):
Why natural? Water we doing? Andhow can we do better? Your one
stop shop for everything waterrelated from discussing water,
its use in the organisms thatdepend on it for all the global
(03:09):
issues that you really neverknew all had to do with water.
I'm your host, David Evans fromthe aquatic biosphere project.
And I just want to ask yousomething. What are we doing?
And how can we do better?
(03:40):
About 33% of the drugs that weuse today in modern health care
come from natural sources. Onegood example of this is
morphine. Morphine naturallyoccurs in the poppy family, and
also can be found in the familyof hops and mulberry trees. We
even produce it in our ownbodies, but just a very low
concentration, so you get moreof it from the poppy family. The
(04:01):
next 33% of drugs were inspiredby nature, so they occur
naturally, but they need alittle bit of tweaking to have
peak performance in the humanbody. A good example of this is
how we got aspirin from the barkof the weeping willow tree.
willow bark has been used as amedicine for over 3500 years.
willow bark contains the activecompound called salicin. And
(04:23):
while salicin will still giveyou the similar effects of
aspirin, it'll give you a reallyirritated stomach. So in 1898, I
see the Salic acid wassynthesized as a more stomach
friendly version of salicin. Andthat's the aspirin that we still
use to this day. The final thirdof drugs on the market is
looking at the problemcompletely differently. It's
(04:44):
looking at where's the problem?
And what can I create tospecifically addressed those
receptors in the body or thoseeffects in the body? So with all
of that in mind, about twothirds of all of the drugs that
we use to this day, are eitherinspired by or come directly
from nature. As a species, we'vebeen exploring our terrestrial
ecosystems for 1000s of years,discovering what can cure what,
(05:07):
but how long have we actuallybeen exploring underwater? Over
80% of the total biodiversity,all of the species in the world
exists in our oceans. Andspecifically, most of them are
in coral reefs. So the questionis, how do you go from the coral
reef to the pharmacy?
Dr. Marc Slattery, Univer (05:27):
Sure.
So I'm Mark Slattery, I work atthe University of Mississippi
and the School of Pharmacy,which is funny, because I'm
actually a classically trainedmarine ecologist, my research
interests while they've been oncoral reefs for a number of
years, but more specifically,I'm interested in the chemicals
that marine organisms produceand why they produce them. And
as an ecologist, I'm moreinterested in the specifics of
(05:48):
how they work for the organismthat's using them, the School of
Pharmacy, sort of recognize thatthe work I was doing had some
application to drug discoverydrugs from the sea. And so
that's sort of become asecondary interest of mine over
the years, and I got that that'swhat we'll be talking about a
little more today, I'm sort ofin the group that is, let's go
to nature. And let's see whatnature tells us. And again, as a
(06:11):
chemical ecologist, I recognizethat there's things the animals
are teaching us. So a lot ofthese compounds are coming from
organisms that are attached tothe bottom, like sponges and
soft corals and things thatcan't run away. I mean, in a,
you know, terrestrial system,you know, you have animals that
(06:31):
run away from predators or getaway from competitors, all sorts
of situations. But if you'restuck in one place, and you
don't have like armor orsomething to protect you, then
oftentimes you got to producechemistry to deal with your
situation. For instance, if it'sa feeding deterrent compound,
there's something nasty there.
(06:53):
And then we take it into the laband say, Well, you know, that
didn't taste very good, maybethat'll have some activity. More
recently, my wife and I aredealing with with issues and
coral diseases. And we recognizethat these are animals that have
primitive immune systems. And soone of the ways they dealt with
diseases, much like we do, theirimmune system is chemistry. And
(07:15):
so we say, well, you know, we'reout on the reef, and we're
seeing, you know, thisindividuals disease, this
individuals disease, and thisone right beside it isn't, isn't
picking up the disease, and whatis it about it? Well, it's
producing more chemistry. And sowe'll go in and find the
compounds that are knocking outthose diseases and say, Okay,
well, that knocks out a diseaseand a quarrel, maybe it'll lock
(07:39):
out or disease. And in a humanbeing, we've taken those
approaches just going in andsort of looking at the
environment and, and sort ofparsing out what the environment
is telling us. That's ourapproach with chemistry in the
sea.
David Evans (07:54):
It's weird to think of getting medicines from a
sponge who lives in a pineappleunder the sea. Sorry, I could
not resist getting drugs from asponge who lives at the bottom
of the ocean, because ourspecies are just so different.
But it makes sense to getchemistry from organisms that
can't run away. They don't havebig teeth, they don't have big
(08:15):
spines, they can't do anythingreally, other than make
chemicals. I mean, an example ofchemical warfare on land is
skunks. No one wants to messwith a skunk. No one wants to
get sprayed. So same goesunderwater. So I'm really
curious, is this a new field?
Are we just starting to dip ourtoes into the ocean per se? On
what drug possibilities theremight be out there? Or is this
(08:38):
something we've been lookinginto for a long time? We know
quite a bit about and we're, wehave a number of drugs already
on the market.
Dr. Marc Slattery, Univer (08:47):
Yeah.
So let me back up and say thatwe're still sort of in our
infancy relative to drugdiscovery from the seas. Okay.
And that's because I mean, scubadiving started with Jacques
Cousteau, what, you know, 5080years ago, something like that.
So we've had far less time doingresearch in the oceans than we
have in tropical rainforest, andso on and so forth. So with that
(09:09):
caveat, there are a fewexamples. But there certainly
aren't as many examples. If youlook in the ancient literature
about 3000 years BC in China,they were actually taxing the
public for a medicine from thesea. And we don't know what that
medicine is. It's just writtenup that way. So people have been
looking at the oceans as asource of even drugs for you
(09:31):
know, the better part of 5000years now, which is pretty
pretty amazing. When you thinkabout it, you know, whereas
tropical rainforest indigenouspeople have utilized their
plants for drugs sources, peoplewere recognizing there's things
to deal with in the ocean. Weknow more specifically a few 100
years ago that ancient Hawaiiansactually used to dip their
(09:55):
spears into tide pools into an Xorganism looks a lot like an
anemone. It's called palettepoly Thoa that produces a toxin
really strong toxin called polytoxin. And they used it much the
same way that indigenousrainforest tribes use poison
dart frog secretions to paralyzetheir prey. And so there was a
(10:17):
recognition that there issomething powerful in in these
animals that is toxic, and isultimately might become a source
of a plant. So there's been someuse of the oceans over the years
with what we now recognizes as achemical source. And what the
1950s was a first example ofsomebody who actually extracted
a sponge and had an ame cryptoTheca, because it was very
(10:42):
cryptic, it actually lives inthe sand grains and such. And he
isolated two compounds that wereknown as era a and era C. And
then again, like I mentioned,using them as sort of
inspiration. He then went to thelab and sort of built his own
versions of those, one of thembecame an antiviral compound
(11:04):
used, I think, for herpesviruses, and the other one
became sort of an anti cancercompound that was sort of the
beginning of, of drugs from thesea, as it were. And around that
time, there were severalchemists who were starting to go
in and make collections and, anddrag out compounds. And on
average, about 5000 compoundsevery year are found mostly from
(11:30):
sponges, sponges seem to be avery rich source of compounds.
David Evans (11:38):
So once these compounds are isolated, so we
have the specimen that producesthis compound, we're able to
isolate it, then we can bring itback to a lab, and we can run it
through a bio assay. So whatthis means is we can test to see
if this will fight against avirus or fight against cancer
forming agent. So now we'recollecting 5000 different
(12:00):
compounds every year. So what'sthe next step for these
potential drugs? How do they gofrom the bio assays to
eventually onto our pharmacyshelves? And what are we already
using that we may not knowactually comes from the sea.
Dr. Marc Slattery, Un (12:13):
Nowadays, there's probably a half a dozen
compounds that are actuallyworldwide being used as drugs.
Not all of them are here in theUnited States. I think the
United States only has one thathas been actually approved
through clinical trials andwhatever else and that's
something that comes from thecone snail. Oh,
David Evans (12:37):
sorry, sorry, sorry, the cone snail is no joke
had to jump in. So they havethese beautiful shells. There's
lots of different species. Theproblem is, they have these
hypodermic like needles in theirmouths, that if you pick it up,
it might just Dart that needleinto you, and inject its venom.
Now, some of the venom isn't asbad. It depends on the species,
(12:57):
but some goes from a beasting upto being enough to actually kill
you. So take a look at theseshells online. They're gorgeous
shells. And remember that nexttime you go to the beach, don't
pick up every shell you see.
Sorry, right back to you, Mark.
Dr. Marc Slattery, Universi (13:11):
Oh, it's again, a toxin. It's used
by the cones to paralyze theirprey, and it goes by the name
Xin Kona tide, it's used inmedicine as a painkiller. It's
actually 1000 times morepowerful than morphine. It
doesn't have the addictiveness.
So it's a very, very goodcompound for pain relief. It's
typically given only in ahospital setting, it has to
(13:35):
actually go into the spine. Andso it's not something that you
get on your shelves per se, butit is a very powerful and
important tool in surgery. Butthe other compounds that are out
there in different countries,there's one that comes from a
toolkit, called a kind of sit inthat is an anti cancer agent.
Oh,
David Evans (13:55):
sorry. Another fun fact with Dave So tunicates,
otherwise known as sea squirtsgroup of marine animals, they
spend most of their livesattached to docks, or rocks or
undersides of boats. And theydon't really look like much they
look like a glob a colored blob,but they're about 2.5
centimeters. And they mostlylook like they're some type of
(14:15):
sponge. But funnily enough,they're actually closer related
to humans than they are to otherinvertebrates. Yeah, they're
closely related to the Core Datafamily, so everything with a
spinal cord, who knew okay,sorry, back to you, Mark. My
apologies.
Dr. Marc Slattery, Universi (14:30):
Oh, oh, a really interesting one
that's out there is somethingcalled suitor terrorists and it
comes from a gorgonian or like asea fan that occurs in the
Caribbean. It's actually an antiinflammatory agent, but it's
actually being used in EsteeLauder resilience. So
apparently, the compound ofinterest in that that I guess,
(14:53):
makes your face better orwhatever, gave sort of an
inflammation response. So youpeople's faces would kind of get
read and stuff like this. Sothey actually added some of this
pseudo terrorists in in there toactually knock down the
inflammation response toeverything else that was in the,
in the compounds that's beingused. So there's there's some
(15:14):
interesting leads out there isinteresting history of testing
these strings through time,we're still getting there. I'm
not sure if I answered yourearlier question on how a drug
actually gets to market. But thereality is, is, you know, it's
often somewhere in theneighborhood of 10 to 20 years
to get through the three phasesof clinical trials, because
(15:35):
classical clinical trials, youknow, you might get 10,000
People with the drug, but thenyou're gonna want to watch him
for four or five or six years tosee what any long term side
effects are. And so drugdiscovery efforts can take quite
a while the part that I met inwhich is in the very beginning,
where you grab something fromthe field, and you start the
process in the lab, that mightbe a year or two, but at some
(15:57):
point, we're going to have topass it off to the sort of the
pharmaceutical industry. And forevery, usually 1000 leads that
you put into the pipeline,you're lucky if you get one out.
So it is a numbers game. And sothen if you sort of look at the
number of years that we've beendoing drug discovery in the
ocean, and you map that out, itsort of makes sense that we're
(16:18):
only at about five or 10 drugleads at this point. But I
guarantee you, there are severalin the pipeline right now that
are doing pretty well, in phaseone, phase two, and I predict
that probably in the next, youknow, three to five years, we'll
probably see a doubling if notmore, in terms of drugs from the
city.
David Evans (16:40):
So maybe sooner rather than later, we will all
need to be thanking that littlesponge who lives in a pineapple
under the sea. Now, this got meto thinking, we have all of
these marine organisms that areliving their lives in these
coral reefs. And suddenly, weput a price tag on their head,
suddenly, they're reallyimportant for this drug that
(17:01):
needs to be out there. So it cancure cancer for everyone around
the world. How are we going toregulate this? And what are we
going to be able to do to makesure that there's a sustainable
population of them, not only sothat they're out there in the
wild, but also so that we canmake sure that we have enough to
be able to provide as medicationfor ourselves.
Dr. Marc Slattery, University (17:23):
I guess one of the things I should
point out, though, is since weare talking about coral reefs,
and sort of their importance, isthe issue of the sustainability
of these drugs from the sea. Sofor instance, when you're
leaving a coral reef, one of thereasons there's so much
biodiversity, there's similarbiomass to what you have sort of
in the kelp forests ofCalifornia, where there they
(17:45):
only have, you know, a fractionof the number of species. So you
might have more species on coralreefs, but you have fewer
individuals. And so if oneparticular individual, whether
that's a sponge, or a coral, ornew to Brank, or something is
providing that drug, then yourun into an issue of supply.
Okay, you can't just go out andsort of rape and pillage to get
(18:08):
enough because there just isn'tenough there. In fact, to enter
clinical trials, you're requiredto produce one kilogram of the
chemical that's going to be usedin the studies and kilogram
while, that doesn't seem like alot, you know, what we're
getting out of these spongesmight be, you know, micro grams,
(18:29):
or PICO grams. So you're talkingabout from any given individual,
you know, scaling that up,you're talking about 1000s, if
not 10s of 1000s of individualsto produce that amount of
chemistry. So this has becomesort of the big challenge of how
do you make up that difference.
So one of the reasons why thechemists are taking sort of
their lead from the chemistrythey find in the oceans, and
(18:50):
then sort of developing it alongin the labs by themselves,
because you can do syntheticchemistry and produce more of
it. It's awful and costlyprocess, but it can be done. But
there are a couple of otheroptions that are available.
There's aquaculture, there wassomething that was incredibly
important to have, you couldactually grow it and to see
farming, you know, they farm alot of terrestrial drugs and
(19:13):
such from plants are beingfarmed, and then taken into a
lab and extracted and used andso there is aquaculture for fish
that we eat. And so one couldarguably do that approach for
these ones that are importantfor drugs. Another is the
molecular biology era, we nowhave the opportunity to go in
(19:33):
and pull out the genes that areresponsible for the production
and particular chemistry andthat's, I don't want this to
come off as like, well that'ssomething we can just do. I mean
it's not not at the age ofJurassic Park yet. We want to
sort of write knocking on thedoors and there are challenges
to pulling genes out puttingthem into a another animal and
(19:56):
telling it to over produce thatparticular compound, but they're
not insurmountable. And soagain, we often archive the
genome of any individual thatwe're working with, with the
understanding that we can'tnecessarily do it today. But
maybe in the next couple ofyears, we're going to be at the
point where that is more of areality than it was certainly
(20:17):
when I started as a grad studentin this business. So yeah, there
are opportunities to besustainable in this drug
discovery effort as well.
David Evans (20:30):
Where there's a will, there's a way, but we'll
also need to make sure thatthere are sustainability markers
with these products and withthese drugs, we need to make
sure that we're beingsustainable with how we're
harvesting natural resources.
Now, I realize we've beenspeaking for 20 minutes about
drugs only. But there's so manyother medical innovations that
come from the seat. Forinstance, there's research going
(20:54):
on to look at how clams andoysters can attach themselves to
rock so that they don't getswept away out to sea during
crashing waves and sweepingtides. And looking at if we can
recreate these glues andattachments, that they are able
to create themselves so that wecan close wounds a lot easier
and safer, and that'llbiodegrade over time. And
(21:16):
there's many medical marvelsthat we're already using. So I'd
like to introduce the neweststar of the show. This organism
has been used in the biomedicalindustry for a very long time, I
can almost guarantee you most ofyou listening to this podcast,
will never have heard of thisspecies, let alone would be able
to identify it if you saw it.
(21:36):
But I can guarantee you that atleast one person that you know,
has had their life impactedbecause of the use of this
organism in the biomedicalindustry. This is a story about
sustainability, about ecosystemcollapse about large, large
pharmaceutical companies, andalso a ragtag group of concerned
citizens, scientists,pharmacists, fishermen, all
(22:00):
banding together to try toswitch to a more sustainable
synthetic alternative. Ladiesand gentlemen, the horseshoe
crab.
Dr. Larry Niles, Horsesho (22:09):
First of all, there are 425 million
year old species. So they'vebeen around the block, the goal
here isn't to save the crabsbecause you know, they're going
to be here long after humans arelost. So the goal is to try to
build up the populations to makethem more robust. So the crabs
(22:29):
are, you know, roughly aboutdish size, the males are smaller
females could get to the size ofa baseball home plate, every
medical product drugs, hipimplants, pacemakers, whatever
are tested with a biochemicalfrom horseshoe crab blood called
(22:49):
lysate. So what it does is thedrug companies have created a
testing assay that allows themto determine if there's any
contaminant in all the variouscomponents of drugs, and then
they test them in their finaldevelopment so that the public
can be assured that there's nocontamination in these drugs or
(23:11):
in whatever device going intoyour body. Previously, they used
rabbits that test. So that'scruel, obviously cruel. And so
this is a innovation for sure.
The problem now is that thepeople who are doing the
bleeding that are basically justafter profit, they bleed them
for eight minutes. So they putthem up on a spike into the
(23:33):
heart, and they bleed them asmuch as they'll bleed for eight
minutes. Killing they say 15%,peer reviewed replications a
30%. But it could be morebecause an eight minute bleed.
So a small crowd might bleed 30%of their blood, whereas a bigger
female could lead up to halftheir blood volume. And so then
(23:57):
they just let them go.
David Evans (24:02):
Well, I know the slogan is blood, it's in you to
give, but this is going a littlebit far. This is Dr. Larry
Niles. He is an ecologist whoused to be the head of the
Endangered Species Program forNew Jersey. He is now a big part
of the horseshoe crab recoverycoalition. And this might be
strange because he's very much abird guy. But as he likes to say
(24:24):
everything that goes on withbirds comes back to horseshoe
crabs along the easternseaboard, especially if you're
somewhere near Delaware Bay.
Dr. Larry Niles, Horse (24:33):
Delaware Bay is one of the top world stop
overs for Arctic nestingshorebirds who make these
dramatically long distancemigrations down to turtle flay
go 10,000 mile journey on theirway back they have to cross the
ocean to get back to NorthAmerica. deplete all their
(24:54):
resources because they're flyingup there seven days at a time
and then they arrive in DelawareBay. They arrived just as
horseshoe crabs start spawningon the bay beaches. They lay
pony eggs in clusters about sixinches deep. But there's so many
crabs that after a certainamount of spawning, every new
(25:14):
crab that comes in to lay eggsdigs up, the eggs have another
crab, so they come up to thesurface. And in that way the
birds can eat them, the birdsquickly gain weight on them at a
time in spring, when all thenatural resources are at their
lowest level. These eggs allowthem to build weight at the
highest rates in the world veryquickly, they get up to the
(25:37):
weight that they need to go onto the Arctic, where they have
enough fat that they can startnesting and lay eggs. And then
by the time the chicks hatch,the Arctic is thawed. And then
you know, life goes on. Pullingout the horseshoe crab block was
a significant ecological actionthat nobody even realized
(25:58):
because it was pulled out beforeanyone knew of the value. Like
even here in Delaware Bay. Thecrabs spawn was amazing. I have
a 1986 video of crabs mining,the harvest of horseshoe crabs
was only maybe 100,000 A year orso in Delaware Bay. And then
(26:20):
within a few years, it went upto 2.5 million. And it was
because they wanted bait for aconch fishery. And very quickly,
they the egg densities onDelaware Bay went from like
50,000 eggs per square meter. Onthe surface, it went as low as
7000. Right now it's about10,000. But in 1986, could see
(26:46):
in this video that there waswind rows of eggs. So it wasn't
like there was an egg here, likethere. It was piles of eggs
pushed up by the waves, and allof that was going into the sea,
and birds, fish crabs, like allthe elements of productivity
that we enjoy. We're all like,you know, just knocked out at
(27:07):
the knees. Nobody documentedthese values before it occurred.
And then we were left withtrying to restore it after it
was already done. And so that'swhere most of the other
horseshoe crab populations arenow. And, you know, I have to
(27:28):
say it's where a lot of naturalresources are right now.
David Evans (27:33):
The harvest of horseshoe crabs has really
affected pretty much everywherein North America, from the
shorebirds in the Arctic thatneed that little pick me up
snack on their way up north. Allof those sport fisheries and
commercial fisheries areimpacted because they don't have
that primary productivity, thoseeggs just aren't there to feed
the fish when they need it.
Horseshoe crabs are what we calla keystone species. So when this
(27:53):
species is actually taken out ofthe system, no more horseshoe
crabs, it affects everythingelse, the ecosystem really
suffers. So what's actuallyhappening to the horseshoe crab
population, not only are theybeing harvested so that we can
collect their blood, but they'realso being harvested so that we
can use them as bait to catchmore bait so that we can catch
(28:15):
even more fish from the ocean.
Yes, there's a huge industryaround just using horseshoe
crabs as bait. Now, that's a bigproblem in itself. But at least
the bleeding. Isn't theresomething we can do. Turns out
we've already created asynthetic alternative. So why
(28:37):
are we still bleeding crabs?
Dr. Larry Niles, Horseshoe (28:39):
That synthetic was actually developed
like over 10 years ago, and thenone of the bleeding companies
bought the patent did nothing.
So essentially kept it out ofthe market. The patent expired
several years ago. And so sincethen, drug companies like Eli
Lilly have already used thesynthetic for both their product
development and for finalproduct testing drug company,
(29:02):
Pfizer just did a head to headtest and found no differences
but all the other leadingcompanies have synthetic
alternatives. One company thatdoes most of the bleeding
Charles River associates, itcurrently doesn't have synthetic
alternatives developed so theychallenged the efficacy of the
synthetic and published thepaper that said that they were
(29:26):
not equivalent to they did atest. But groups within our
coalition like Physicians forResponsible Medicine and the
companies that are involvedbiome Are you is going along
with Eli Lilly. It basicallywent to work and found that
Charles River had deliberatelymanipulated by starting with
(29:47):
something called Dirty waterwhich is water that includes a
contaminant that they knew thesynthetic wouldn't detect. But
now no drug company uses dirtywater. So is a artificial
restriction that led the FDA andthe US Pharmacopoeia to
essentially reverse theirearlier positions. So right now,
(30:11):
it's in that period of flux. Theway it looks is because of
Pfizer's new data, and becauseof the influence of the drug
companies and our influence,because the other side of the
equation here is that thepharmaceutical companies have
(30:32):
committed to not using animaltesting if they don't have to.
And so this is pitting themagainst that ideal. I hope that
it'll change this year.
David Evans (30:48):
Did you get all of that? All right, so quick recap.
That was a lot of information.
So we have this syntheticversion of horseshoe crab blood
that basically, we think can doexactly what the horseshoe crab
blood does. And we don't have todrain the blood from horseshoe
crabs, somewhere along DelawareBay. Perfect. This makes a lot
of sense, until you get largeorganizations involved that make
(31:12):
a lot of money by collectingthese horseshoe crabs, bleeding
them out and selling theirblood. So there might be
incentives to skew the resultsof their tests. And that's what
the horseshoe crab recoverycoalition thinks might be
happening. So they've beenrunning their own tests, the
members of the drug companiesthat are part of the horseshoe
crab recovery coalition aretrying to prove that the
(31:33):
synthetic version is just asgood as the horseshoe crab blood
version. Now, the FDA has tomake a decision on whether or
not horseshoe crab blood and thesynthetic are comparable, and we
can make the switch to syntheticfully. The problem is, this is
too important to test to makeany mistakes, we need to be
fully sure, and dot all of ouri's and cross all of our T's
(31:56):
before making the switch. But ifthere's a team that can get this
done, the horseshoe crabrecovery coalition, like Asha
said that so many times now youmust be so annoyed with me. They
are the team to do it, becausethey are a huge group from very
diverse backgrounds. And wellmight as well hear from the
expert. So when
Dr. Larry Niles, Horseshoe C (32:18):
we first started out, we thought,
you know, we bind together theusual players, you know,
conservation group, and we didlike National Wildlife
Federation, National Audubonfenders for wildlife, they're
all part of the coalition. Butsee, because we're talking about
a valuable biochemical. It alsobrings in Eli Lilly, the drug
(32:39):
companies and PhysiciansCommittee for a Responsible
Medicine is part of thecoalition. But we also have
groups like Manhattan defenders,and sport fishing guides
association. So you know, whatwe're doing is binding together
a coalition that sort ofaddresses this very difficult
(33:00):
conservation problem. It's onethat plagues every natural
resource right now, whether it'sforestry or agriculture industry
is consuming, not just the sortof top level product of a
system, they're commodifyingevery layer of that system so
that they're basically removingall the productivity from
(33:21):
ecosystems. And, you know, ourwhole climate change initiative
depends on functioningecosystems. So you can't rely on
the normal method, a bunch ofconservation groups get together
and say, This is what it shouldbe. This is more like, let's all
work together to try to figureout how we can solve
David Evans (33:42):
it almost sounds like a joke of a bird biologist
at sports, Fisher andpharmaceutical representative
walk into a bar or somethinglike that. It just, it seems
like a weird, a weird group ofpeople that work together. All
jokes aside, they're doing greatwork. And I'm so excited to see
(34:03):
where this goes. One of the mainmessages that I got both from
Dr. Mark Slattery and Dr. LarryNiles, was about sustainability.
So Dr. Mark Slattery, can youjust finish it off with why we
should care about preserving ourcoral reef ecosystems?
Dr. Marc Slattery, Universit (34:21):
So that's a great issue. And I've
I've had long discussions withother individuals, including my
own family who look at coralreefs, as you know, well, why
are we spending money to savethem when we've got people that
are homeless, you know, drugsfrom the sea. This is certainly
something that people can gettheir heads around if we find a
(34:42):
new drug if we cure cancer orsomething that has huge
implications for society as awhole. And so I'm quite happy to
wave the flag for drugdiscovery, if it's going to help
save coral reefs for futuregenerations.
David Evans (35:02):
Thanks for listening to today's episode all
about drugs from the see what wecan get for the future of
medicine from our oceans andfreshwater systems. I'm your
host, David Evans. And I wouldjust love to thank all of the
guests on today's episode. Sostarting at the first speaker,
Dr. Mark Slattery from theUniversity of Mississippi. To
find out more about Dr. Mark'swork, I couldn't find a specific
(35:23):
website for him, but I'll leavelinks for the pharmacology
department at Ole Miss, and alsoto his TED talk on YouTube, all
about drugs from the sea. Andalso, I'd love to thank Dr.
Larry nails from the horseshoecrab recovery coalition. Last
time, I need to say that you canfind out more about their work
at HS crab recovery.org. AndI'll leave a link for his own
(35:44):
website as well where you cankeep up to date with what's
going on in the crab world andin the bird world. And
basically, everything you needto know about Delaware Bay, be
sure to check out the show notesas I'll leave links for all of
these plus lots of otherinformation, just in case this
just whet your palate and youcan't wait to learn more. Be
sure to check out the shownotes. It'll all be there and
(36:06):
get excited the deep diveepisode with both Dr. Mark
Slattery and Dr. Larry Nileswill be coming out in the next
couple of weeks, so make sureyou are subscribed so that you
don't miss any of theseepisodes. I'm the host and
producer David Evans. And I justlike to thank the rest of the
team specifically Paul Polman,Lee Burton, and the rest of the
aquatic biosphere board. Thanksfor all of your help. And to
(36:27):
learn more about the aquaticbiosphere project and what we're
doing right here in Albertatelling the story of water, you
can check us out at aquaticbiosphere.ca. And we also have
launched our new media company,a b n aquatic biosphere network
that you can find that thepublic place dot online and
search for the aquatic biospherenetwork channel, where we will
(36:50):
actually be posting all of thevideo episodes that we're going
to be creating this year. Sotune in. They will be out for
the next little while, but veryexcited to start sharing video
content as well of ourinterviews. If you have any
questions or comments about theshow, we'd love to hear them.
Email us at conservation ataquatic biosphere.org. Please
(37:11):
don't forget to like, share andsubscribe. Leave us a review. It
really helps us out. Thanks andit's been a splash
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