Fifty years of capacity building in the search for new marine natural products

Abstract

The Convention on Biological Diversity, and the Nagoya Protocol in particular, provide a framework for the fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising from the utilization of biological resources and traditional knowledge, and ultimately aim to promote capacity-building in the developing world. However, measuring capacity-building is a challenging task due to its intangible nature. By compiling and analyzing a database of scientific peer-reviewed publications over a period of 50 y (1965 to 2015), we investigated capacity-building in global marine natural product discovery. We used publication and authorship metrics to assess how the capacity to become scientifically proficient, prolific, and independent has changed in bioprospecting countries. Our results show that marine bioprospecting is a dynamically growing field of research with continuously increasing numbers of participating countries, publications, and scientists. Yet despite longstanding efforts to promote equitability and scientific independence, not all countries have similarly increased their capacity to explore marine biodiversity within their national jurisdiction areas. Although developing countries show an increasing trend in the number of publications, a few developed countries still account for almost one-half of all publications in the field. Multiple lines of evidence suggest that economic capacity affects how well countries with species-rich marine ecosystems can scientifically explore those resources. Overall, the capacity-building data analyzed here provides a timely contribution to the ongoing international debate about access to and benefit-sharing of biological resources for countries exploring biodiversity within and outside their national jurisdiction areas.

Functional genomics and metabolomics advance the ethnobotany of the Samoan traditional medicine “matalafi”

“…This combinatorial approach provides molecular insight into traditional knowledge and provides insight into potential new uses of traditional medicine. As recently deemed to be increasingly important for advancing ethnobiology and natural product drug discovery, albeit rarely accomplished ( 61 – 63 ), our study integrated indigenous researcher–community engagement with interdisciplinary methodologies to discover and develop the great pharmaceutical potential in traditional knowledge regarding natural products as used in traditional medicine.…”

An overview of jellyfish aquaculture: for food, feed, pharma and fun

“…The interest in the bioprospecting of marine organisms has increased over the last two decades, as the marine realm holds a range of bioactive compounds that have no terrestrial counterparts and are of great value for multiple biotechnological applications. 18,40,133 Cnidarians rank among the top marine invertebrates yielding more new bioactive compounds, although to date, only a limited number of these biomolecules have been extracted from pelagic cnidarians (hydromedusae and scyphomedusae). 18,40,134 Jellyfish have received an increased attention as potential sources of several biochemical compounds, some of which may have important applications in biomaterials, 33,135 nutraceutical, 15,17,21,26 cosmeceutical 30,31,136 and pharmaceutical research.…”

Specific Antiproliferative Properties of Proteinaceous Toxin Secretions from the Marine Annelid Eulalia sp. onto Ovarian Cancer Cells

“…There is a growing awareness for the potential of the seas as a source of novel therapeutic agents, in face of their immense biodiversity [ 7 , 9 ]. In fact, the number of marine natural products explored for various biotechnological purposes has been increasing over the past few years (see the review of Hu et al [ 10 ] for a statistical appraisal on marine bioprospecting).…”