The Search for New Antibiotics Under the Sea
Summary
TLDRThe script discusses the alarming rise of antibiotic resistance, predicting that by 2025, infectious diseases could outpace cancer in mortality. It highlights the urgent need for new drugs and turns to the ocean as a potential source of biomedical resources. The speaker recounts their journey in marine exploration, the development of sampling strategies, and the discovery of new antibiotic compounds. The challenges faced by the pharmaceutical industry in developing new antibiotics are underscored, emphasizing the critical need for investment and innovation to combat this public health crisis.
Takeaways
- 💊 Antibiotics are becoming ineffective against common infectious diseases like pneumonia and skin infections.
- ⏳ By 2025, infectious diseases are predicted to cause more deaths than cancer if no action is taken to combat antibiotic resistance.
- 🌊 The ocean is being explored as a new source for discovering drugs, including new antibiotics.
- 🏥 Hospital-acquired infections like MRSA are increasingly resistant to antibiotics, posing a significant health risk.
- 🛳️ The speaker recounts experiences of exploring the ocean for microorganisms, including dangerous weather and pirate encounters.
- 🔬 Scientists have developed tools and strategies to collect samples from various depths of the ocean for microbiological analysis.
- 🧪 Over 18,000 strains of bacteria have been isolated and preserved for potential antibiotic development.
- 🛑 The misuse of antibiotics is accelerating the prevalence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, leading to a vicious cycle of increased hospital stays and costs.
- 🚑 The consequences of antibiotic resistance include longer hospital stays, higher medical costs, and an increased risk of death from infections.
- 🧬 The speaker discusses the discovery of new antibiotic compounds from oceanic microorganisms, such as 'an terasa Meissen', which shows promise in treating MRSA.
- 💼 The development of new antibiotics is hindered by the high costs and low financial incentives for pharmaceutical companies.
- 🏛️ Despite recognition of the problem by political figures, there is a lack of national focus and funding for the development of new antibiotics in the United States.
Q & A
Why are current antibiotics becoming less effective?
-Current antibiotics are becoming less effective due to the overuse and misuse of these drugs, which allows bacteria to evolve and develop resistance to them.
What is the potential consequence if we don't address the issue of antibiotic resistance?
-If we don't address the issue of antibiotic resistance, by 2025 more people are predicted to die from infectious diseases than from cancer.
Why is the ocean considered a new source for drugs?
-The ocean is considered a new source for drugs because it is a massive, largely unexplored biomedical resource that could potentially yield new antibiotics to combat resistant bacteria.
What is the 'snapper' device used for in the context of the script?
-The 'snapper' is a device used to collect samples from the ocean floor at depths of 1,000 meters (3,000 feet), providing material for further study and potential drug development.
How many strains of bacteria have been isolated from the ocean over the past 15 years according to the script?
-Over the past 15 years, approximately 18,000 strains of bacteria have been isolated from the ocean.
What is the significance of the antibiotic 'an terasa Meissen' mentioned in the script?
-An terasa Meissen is a new kind of antibiotic structure discovered from oceanic bacteria, unrelated to any other known antibiotics, and has shown high potency against MRSA in experimental models.
What challenges do pharmaceutical companies face in developing new antibiotics?
-Developing new antibiotics is challenging due to the high costs involved, the short duration of use for such drugs, and the low return on investment compared to other types of medications like cancer treatments.
Why did the major pharmaceutical industry stop isolating new antibiotic compounds?
-The major pharmaceutical industry stopped isolating new antibiotic compounds due to the high costs and risks associated with research and development, as well as the limited market potential for these drugs.
What is the current state of national focus on the development of new antibiotics in the United States according to the script?
-As of the script's information, there is no national focus on the development of new antibiotics in the United States, with Congress not allocating funds for this purpose despite an initiative declared by President Obama.
What is the potential impact of not developing new antibiotics?
-The potential impact of not developing new antibiotics could lead to a massive epidemic of infectious diseases, with tens of thousands of deaths per year in the US, as existing antibiotics become ineffective.
What is the role of environmental substances in the development of antibiotics?
-Environmental substances, which have been present for millennia, have been harnessed over the last 90 years to develop antibiotics. However, the overuse of these substances has led to the emergence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
Outlines
💊 Antibiotic Resistance and Ocean Exploration
The script addresses the urgent issue of antibiotic resistance, highlighting the fact that common antibiotics are becoming ineffective against infectious diseases such as pneumonia and skin infections. It emphasizes the potential of the ocean as an untapped source for new drugs. The speaker recounts their journey at Scripps Oceanography, exploring various regions and developing innovative sampling tools to collect bacteria from the ocean depths. Over 15 years, they have isolated 18,000 strains of bacteria, preserved them for further study, and discovered the environmental substances' potential in treating serious infections. The narrative also touches on the challenges of antibiotic resistance, including longer hospital stays and higher medical costs, and the need for continuous drug development to counter the evolving bacteria.
🌊 Marine Microorganisms: A New Hope for Antibiotics
This paragraph delves into the dwindling resources for discovering new antibiotics and the shift of focus from soil to marine environments. The speaker shares the story of discovering a bacterium in beach sand that was effective against MRSA, leading to the isolation of a new compound called an terasa Meissen. The compound showed promising results in animal models, with an 85% survival rate in rats infected with MRSA, without signs of toxicity. However, the speaker also discusses the challenges in developing new antibiotics, including the high costs and risks involved, the lack of interest from pharmaceutical companies, and the absence of national focus or funding for antibiotic development. Despite these obstacles, the speaker remains committed to exploring marine microorganisms for potential new treatments, having found several quality antibiotics and cancer drugs in recent years.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Antibiotics
💡Infectious Diseases
💡Ocean
💡Mersenne Infection
💡Cryo Preservation
💡Drug Resistance
💡Epidemic
💡Penicillin
💡Clinical Trials
💡Public Health Issue
💡Biomedical Resource
Highlights
Antibiotics are becoming ineffective against infectious diseases such as pneumonia and skin infections.
By 2025, infectious diseases may cause more deaths than cancer if no action is taken.
The ocean is recognized as a vast, untapped source for new drugs and antibiotics.
Hospital-acquired infections like Mersenne are highly resistant to current antibiotics.
Exploration of the ocean for microorganisms began with a focus on Central America and the Indo-Pacific.
The development of new sampling strategies was necessary to collect bacteria from various depths.
A simple device called 'snapper' was invented for collecting seabed samples.
Over 18,000 strains of bacteria have been isolated and preserved for study.
Environmental substances have been used as antibiotics for nearly a century.
The misuse of antibiotics has led to the rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
The consequences of antibiotic resistance include longer hospital stays and higher medical costs.
The development of new drugs is crucial to stay ahead of evolving bacterial resistance.
Patients can experience severe side effects or life-threatening reactions to antibiotics.
The era of effective antibiotics was relatively short, from the 1940s to the 1980s.
Sir Alexander Fleming warned about the misuse of antibiotics leading to drug resistance.
Traditional sources like soil have been largely exhausted for new antibiotic discovery.
Beach sand samples revealed a bacterium producing a new type of antibiotic compound.
A new antibiotic, 'an terasa Meissen', showed high efficacy against MRSA in animal models.
Developing new antibiotics is challenging due to high costs and short usage duration.
There is a lack of national focus and funding for the development of new antibiotics in the U.S.
The speaker's team has discovered several potential antibiotics and cancer drugs.
Major pharmaceutical companies have stopped researching new antibiotics due to financial risks.
The speaker emphasizes the importance of continuing the search for new antibiotics despite the challenges.
Transcripts
the facts are our antibiotics that we
have are now becoming useless in
treating infectious diseases pneumonia
skin diseases upper respiratory diseases
lung infection if we don't do something
by 2025 more people will die from
infectious diseases than from cancer and
so we realized that the ocean is a
massive biomedical resource a new source
for drugs
so what's happening out there people go
to the hospital to have their appendix
taken out and they end up with a
Mersenne infection it's over 90%
resistant to antibiotics we're going to
get an epidemic of infectious diseases
in the next five years this is a serious
problem that we are not properly
addressing in the United States in 1973
I came down to Scripps oceanography and
I knocked on the door and I said I want
to develop chemical studies of life in
the sea I want to do some things that
people have not done in the beginning we
were just exploring police Central
America Palau in the indo-pacific Wow I
do have stories about being on board
ships when we were serious danger from
hurricanes serious weather conditions
we've also been attacked by pirates in
which the captain had to actually fire a
weapon at them what we've tried to do is
explore because we didn't know where the
most exciting microorganisms were found
in the ocean we looked at sea water we
then went to the bottom sediments and we
began to understand what's there but
then we realized that bacteria were
inside different plants and animals we
needed to develop sampling strategies to
collect samples beginning at 1,000
metres 3,000 feet
so we've developed simple tools like
this device which I would call a snapper
we'll wrap this from a boat and you hit
the bottom the jaw is closed bring it up
to the surface and you've got a nice
sample of material to work with
we have about 18,000 strains of bacteria
that we've isolated over the past 15
years we put them into cryo preservation
in each box our small tubes one strain
of bacteria we can then remove and begin
to unravel the complexity of what's in
that particular copper good morning will
nauseated okay so we have a plan for
your antibiotics the one for the more
serious infection the staph infection
you'll get that for six more weeks at
least get it down and then once we get
that infection down then you can go in
and have your surgery
these are environmental substances
they've been around for millennia in the
last 90 years we've harnessed them and
administer them in large scale to
patients
we're just unmasking them slowly and
slowly and the more antibiotics we use
you're then allowing the environment for
these antibiotic resistance the bacteria
to become more and more prevalent then
it starts off like this vicious cycle a
longer hospital stays and higher medical
costs the only way you can stay ahead of
this constant evolution is by developing
more drugs patients get side effects to
antibiotics all the time and if the
patient gets a life-threatening adverse
reaction to your one antibiotic left
then you're back to no antibiotics and
the consequences of obviously increasing
risk of dying from getting these things
I was born in a time when antibiotics
actually worked and that was you know
there's really brief window of time from
around the 1940s until around the 1980s
it really seemed like medicine had
conquered infectious disease I mean it
was Sir Alexander Fleming who said this
when he got the Nobel Prize you know he
said that if we use these antibiotics in
ways that are not medically necessary we
will provoke the emergence of these
drug-resistant strains of bacteria and
other pathogens we already are starting
to run out of drugs that are strong
enough and we now have 23,000 Americans
dying of drug resistant bacterial
infections every year
penicillin actonel mice and streptomycin
all of these drugs that we have today
came from scientists studying soil but
that resource after so many years of
intense study just began to diminish and
so we realized that the same
microorganisms that were in the soil
that generated the antibiotics are out
there but they're different one of my
workers was moving up and down the coast
and I said why don't you stop and just
take some beach sand we discovered the
bacterium that makes and through some
ison we discovered that it was very
active against Mercia and so we began to
study this microbe and finally pull the
compound from the complex mixture this
is one liter of seawater with nutrients
that we know are useful in growing
bacteria we discovered chemically a
brand new kind of structure not related
to any other kinds of antibiotics ever
discovered and very potent we called it
an terasa Meissen we did the experiment
a model where you inject rats with MRSA
methicillin-resistant Staph they're only
going to live for five or six days and
then you have a treatment group
treated with an threesome Isen in a way
that is similar or identical to how you
would treat a human and then we watched
85% of the animals survived they didn't
show any evidence of toxicity a critical
piece of information that allows you to
convince people that this could in
effect be a drug and so the question
then became how can we develop it
very few drug companies want to create
antibiotics it's a lot of money to do
the Rd what do you get out of that you
get a drug that's used for maybe a week
at most and which even though it saves
lives
people don't want to pay more than 100
bucks or so yeah we'll pay tens of
thousands of dollars for a cancer
treatment that might not even extend
life at all now what that means is if
that kind of infection is out in the
environment is really an end to medicine
as we know it
drug-resistant bacteria are one of the
most serious public health issues that
we face today despite President Obama
declaring an initiative to begin to work
on this horrible problem Congress has
not allocated funds to do so as of today
there is no national focus on the
development of new antibiotics
when you're looking at such a massive
resource out here you have to remember
that finding just those perfect
discoveries that are going to cure
infectious disease takes time takes
investment and there's risk you know a
typical drug for cancer in a
pharmaceutical industry would require
the involvement of over 200 people 300
500 million a billion dollars the kinds
of grant money that I can get are
$100,000 per year we found six or seven
good quality antibiotics in the last six
to eight years five cancer drugs two of
which are currently in clinical trials
in humans the major pharmaceutical
industry quit isolating new antibiotic
compounds they quit working with
microorganisms what an error in judgment
in my mind not to think about 75 80
percent of the surface of the earth
what's the alternative don't develop
anything don't discover anything new not
consider infectious diseases the massive
epidemic that it is going to be 70 80 90
thousand people dying in the US per year
our antibiotics that we have are now
becoming useless in treating infectious
diseases but should I quit should I not
keep trying to do so I don't think so
you
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