One project in 100 turns out a drug that is both safe and effective in humans, Paul Armond told an audience gathered in September for the MBL's second annual Marine Biotechnology Symposium. One of the best sources of ideas is nature, said Armond, the assistant director of research and development at Pfizer's Groton, Connecticut, laboratory. Pfizer has enlisted the help of biologists around the world in gathering samples of natural compounds that can be tested for antibiotic or anti-cancer activity. In the last two years, Pfizer has signed contracts with land-based biologists in China and Japan and New York and with marine biologists in Maryland and Woods Hole. The anti-cancer drug, taxol, comes from yew trees, for example.
Microbes also present less of a supply and demand problem.
To take a marine example, certain sea squirts produce a compound called bryostatin that is effective against leukemia, melanoma, and other human cancers. But the National Cancer Institute had to collect 38,000 kilograms of sea squirts to get the 18 grams of bryostatin necessary for clinical trials. But if a microbe is producing bioactive compounds you want to study, you can grow it in the lab. Most of them have never been identified, much less studied. Bacteria also can be found living on or in macroorganisms such as fish, sponges, starfish, and other invertebrates.