Vol. 1, No. 2
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Marine biotechnology Gulf of Maine researchers and industries explore new markets emerging from the ocean Halifax, Nova Scotia -- The potential for harvesting economic benefits from the sea extends far beyond the seafood case into the pharmacy, the ice cream freezer, the shampoo bottle, the farm field, and other realms. Marine biotechnology -- the use or development of living marine organisms for specific applications -- is revealing more and more about what the ocean offers in addition to traditional opportunities such as fisheries and aquaculture. The promising biotechnology sector has the potential to move Gulf of Maine communities into new marine-related markets. Marine plants and animals have long provided the raw materials for much more than sushi and chowder, and the market is expanding even more rapidly as research turns up new information on uses of marine organisms, according to Canada's National Research Council (NRC) Institute for Marine Biosciences (IMB), based in Halifax, Nova Scotia. The US Department of Agriculture's Biotechnology Information Center (BIC) notes that as marine organisms have had to adapt to extreme environments, they have developed unique systems and mechanisms that provide researchers with inexhaustible avenues for research and development. Marine products can be used in treating human disease; developing industrial cleaners; creating biodegradable films used in medical implants, automotive parts, electronic devices, and protective coatings; manufacturing natural pesticides that are less harmful than some of their synthetic counterparts; and cleaning up oil spills, among numerous other applications. New products create opportunities for coastal communities The Institute for Marine Biosciences -- one of five NRC biotechnology laboratories conducting research and development for the health care, pharmaceutical, natural resources, and environmental fields -- works with companies to identify new drugs and agricultural and industrial products that can be made from marine sources, according to Paul Smith, Business and Programs Services officer at the institute. Citing considerable growth over the last five years in the number of new companies looking at applications for products from marine sources, Smith asserted, "Over the next five to ten years we should see some real success stories. There's no question that it's very important to the future of coastal communities in Canada, with declining fisheries stocks, to create high value jobs, good employment opportunities -- value-added opportunities. And it's these technology products that have the potential to do it," he said. But Smith noted that the technological aspects of marine biotechnology can be very closely tied to the fisheries industry, as is the case with the fish oil used in human nutritional supplements. Smith is optimistic that economic opportunities will emerge, now that marine biotechnology is moving from the laboratory into the marketplace. He estimates that the marine biotechnology sector is now worth less than $50 million annually to the Canadian economy, but has the potential over the next decade to increase "several fold." Seaweed, used in soil additives, and fish oils, used in human nutritional supplements, are two of the biggest marine product markets in Atlantic Canada, according to Smith. Andy Cameron of the Nova Scotia Department of Fisheries said seaweed extracts alone -- used in products from soil conditioners to beer and cosmetics -- offer significant returns. "In its landed form, rockweed [a type of seaweed] is valued between $40 and $70 a ton; in dried form at approximately $800 a ton," he said. Fish processing waste, which is used as an agricultural fertilizer, is another important, developing market, added Smith. IMB's clients include the agri-chemical, pharmaceutical, food-processing, food safety, animal health, aquaculture health, human nutritional supplement, biomedical technology, laboratory supply, and research fields. "All these markets are international. The seaweed soil additive is sold in over 40 countries worldwide," Smith said. "People are setting out a pretty wide net," in terms of how they're using marine products, said Smith. He noted that IMB works with a collection of 1,200 marine organisms and microorganisms that the institute is evaluating in collaboration with industrial clients for compounds with commercial potential. Smith explained that high technology methods for finding new pharmaceuticals are needed to shorten the time and lessen the expense of bringing a new drug into the marketplace. "The notion of finding a new drug or cure for cancer from any natural product is a high-risk endeavor, costing, on average about 300 million dollars in the US," he said. Nevertheless, Smith asserted that the use of marine products for high tech applications "has the potential to be as big an industry as our wild fishery in Canada, remembering that it only takes one successful new drug from a marine source to create a multi-billion dollar marketplace." He was careful to point out, though, that "there's no question that as it sits today that it's in its developmental stages." Interest in developing potential markets for marine biotechnology is also growing elsewhere in the Gulf of Maine, including in Maine, where Governor Angus King recently announced a new "Jobs from the SeaÓ initiative setting aside resources for marine biotechnology research. Company capitalizes on horseshoe crab's contributions The work of one Massachusetts company illustrates how one specific characteristic of a single marine plant or animal can create an entire market. Associates of Cape Cod (ACC), based in Woods Hole since 1974, uses a substance in horseshoe crab blood to manufacture a product that pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturers use to test the quality of their products. The material ACC manufactures, Limulus amebocyte lysate, or LAL, is derived from the substance that causes the horseshoe crab's blood to clot in response to the presence of certain bacteria. "The horseshoe crab is so old, evolutionarily speaking, that it has never developed antibodies, so instead it clots its blood to fight infection," explained Marilyn Gould, the company's vice president of regulatory affairs. ACC's clients use LAL to test their own products for endotoxins -- structural components in the cell wall of a certain group of bacteria that are shed as the bacteria grow and when they die. Pharmaceutical companies comprise the majority of ACC's customers, but because the endotoxins that LAL measures or detects come from a group of bacteria found everywhere, other clients also use the product in testing the quality of water, food, and cosmetics, among other applications, Gould noted. ACC contracts with local fishermen to gather the horseshoe crabs from Cape Cod Bay and from Rhode Island's Narragansett Bay. "Typically, the horseshoe crab is out of water 36 hours for our application, but they can stay out of water much longer, as long as their gills are damp," said Gould. Once they've "donatedÓ their blood to the ACC lab, the crabs are returned to the area from which they were taken, apparently suffering no more ill effects from donating blood than do human blood donors. As Gould explains it, the crabs' initial contribution of their blood prevents rabbits from having to be used in testing pharmaceutical and medical products for the specific endotoxin LAL detects. "When drug products are tested for toxic substances you typically use an animal. But the LAL test is literally the first test to replace an animal pretty much completely for the detection of this endotoxin," she said. While ACC specializes in manufacturing one single product, Gould noted that horseshoe crab blood contains other substances that may also have therapeutic applications. A single plant or animal can provide many products with applications in a broad array of industries, opening up multiple opportunities for economic growth. "The average person who goes to the seafood counter assumes that that's the extent of what's out there and that's partly because [marine biotechnology] is very new," observed Smith. "But in the research community what we're trying to accomplish in the oceans is what's been carried on for centuries on land," which only emphasizes that the ocean contains a world of potential products that researchers have only begun to explore. |
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Gulf of Maine Council on the Marine