Bioprospecting Moves To The Deep Sea

by Sanjay Suri

(IPS) LONDON -- The battle over environmental resources is now plumbing new depths, right to the bottom of the oceans.

That is because organisms down there live through some of the harshest known conditions and develop characteristics that are emerging as a major resource in fighting disease and in improving living conditions.

At the moment it is a free-for-all for "bioprospecting" of genetic resources in the deep seabed. But since that is an expensive undertaking, it is only some developed countries that have the technology and the money to dig deep into ocean water and below. Scientists are now asking for international law to govern such bioprospecting.

"In principle this prospecting is open to anyone, but the only countries with the technology to tap these organisms are countries such as Japan, the United States and France, and increasingly others like Canada and Britain," Salvatore Arico from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) told IPS. Arico was associated with a report on deep sea research produced by the United Nations University, a Tokyo-based international group of scholars studying global problems.

Genetic research is looking increasingly under the sea, Arico said. "These resources in the deep sea bed are unique," he said. You have both micro and macro forms of life that can resist extreme pressure, toxicity, salinity and temperature. Once you find an organism that can resist such conditions, then in a laboratory you can modify genes responsible for producing that compound and use that in processes such as the development of biomedicals."

All information obtained so far "indicates that such biomedicines are an extremely promising area," Arico said.

The difficulty lies with depletion or even destruction of these forms of life. "We have already observed that with practices such as trawling that have meant that fish stocks have gone down and several species of fish have just disappeared," Arico said. "That raises fundamental questions how we deal with these resources."

Several scientists are concerned that countries tapping into this deep sea wealth for "extremophiles" can then claim intellectual property rights over what they find. This is a question that needs more attention for the sake of equitable access to this deep sea wealth, said report contributor Sam Johnston. "The legal and policy framework is not even close to keeping pace with the fast-evolving science and technology of deep seabed bioprospecting."

Industry wants ownership of these resources but "governments have to see that these resources are used in equitable ways," Johnston told IPS. More work needs to be done to see how ownership over this 'blue gold' can be established, he said.

The report by the UN scientists says that the world's oceans host 32 of the 34 known phyla on earth.

Species diversity is known to be as high as 1,000 per square metre in the Indo-Pacific Ocean, the report says. The ratio of potentially useful natural compounds is higher in marine than terrestrial organisms. There is, therefore, a higher probability of commercial success with marine-sourced material. The odds of success are long, however; just one to two percent of pre-clinical candidates become commercial products.

Nevertheless, the report says all major pharmaceutical firms, including Merck, Lilly, Pfizer, Hoffman-Laroche and Bristol-Myers Squibb, have marine biology departments, and cites the following estimates:

• Worldwide sales in 2000 of marine biotechnology-related products: 100 billion dollars;
• Annual profits from a compound derived from a sea sponge to treat herpes: 50 million to 100 million dollars;
• Value of anti-cancer agents from marine organisms: 1 billion dollars a year.

Marine-derived drugs can be used as antioxidant, anti-fungal, anti-HIV, antibiotic, anti-cancer, anti-tuberculosis and anti-malaria. Applications for the treatment of Alzheimer's disease, cystic fibrosis and impotence are also under consideration.

Other compounds have anti-inflammatory properties and one is used as an anti-irritant in cosmetics. A hormone extracted from salmon has been found effective in preventing osteoporosis while a salmon-derived sulfate is an antidote to the anticoagulant heparin.

Sponges are particularly targeted as potential sources of pharmaceutical products. One of the most effective treatments for leukemia is based on derivatives of a sponge while a sponge-derived steroid compound completed phase-one trials as an asthma drug in 2000. Other research in progress includes treatments for breast and ovarian cancer.

Impediments to this research include not just the high expedition costs but the absence of clear rules governing resource-access benefits sharing. Some companies say uncertainty over access procedures is a major deterrent to their research and investment, according to the report.

The report identifies shortcomings in the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and the Convention on Biological Diversity and intellectual property rights instruments governing access and benefit-sharing to genetic resources. These include the need to:

• Establish whether describing the sequence of a genome can be considered an invention;
• Define bioprospecting;
• Develop criteria and guidelines to help states determine the implications of marine scientific research;
• Decide if marine scientific researchers/academia and private companies should be treated differently in access to deep seabed genetic resources.
• Designing a regime for bioprospecting in the deep seabed.

The report says regional agreements could be used as a first step towards a comprehensive international regime to protect the deep seabed from over-exploitation.