Discussion

The urgent need for novel substances for the treatment of severe human diseases such as cancer and inflammatory disorders, combined with the recognition that marine organismprovide a rich potential source of such substances support the intensive exploration of new substances from marine organisms. Marine fungi have been shown to be a potent group of secondary metabolite producers. Nevertheless, this group of fungi to date is not well characterized and underutilized for drug discovery. Therefore, an interdisciplinary consortium of 11 partner institutions was founded under the European Union Framework 7 program to discover novel compounds from marine fungi for the treatment of cancer.
The overall goal of the Marine Fungi consortium is the identification of novel compounds and their characterisation to the stage of in vivo proof of concept ready to enter further drug development. The main objectives are:
- Genome analysis of three genomes of marine fungi and identification of biosynthetic genes and regulators.
- Isolation of 600 new fungal strains from marine habitats in Chile, Indonesia and the Mediterranean and screening of these isolates for secondary metabolites.
- Structural elucidation of new marine derived secondary metabolites and demonstration of their anti-cancer potential.
- In vivo efficacy determination for five selected compounds in cancer models.
- Development of process concepts for sustainable processes for the production of the bioactive compounds in large / industrial scale.
The Biotechnology centre of the University of Oslo contributes by analysing the effect of compounds on the receptor downstream signaling in cancer cell lines using the flow cytometry based method “phospho flow”.

Johannes Landskron, Kjetil Taskén