MabCent: Arctic marine bioprospecting in Norway

Abstract

The deep waters surrounding the coastline of the northern parts of Norway represent an exciting biotope for marine exploration. Dark and cold Arctic water generates a hostile environment where the ability to adapt is crucial to survival. These waters are nonetheless bountiful and a diverse plethora of marine organisms thrive in these extreme conditions, many with the help of specialised chemical compounds. In comparison to warmer, perhaps more inviting shallower tropical waters, the Arctic region has not been as thoroughly investigated. MabCent is a Norwegian initiative based in Tromsø that aims to change this. Since 2007, scientists within MabCent have focussed their efforts on the study of marine organisms inhabiting the Arctic waters with the long term goal of novel drug discovery and development. The activities of MabCent are diverse and range from sampling the Arctic ice shelf to the chemical synthesis of promising secondary metabolites discovered during the screening process. The current review will present the MabCent pipeline from isolation to identification of new bioactive marine compounds via an extensive screening process. An overview of the main activities will be given with particular focus on isolation strategies, bioactivity screening and structure determination. Pitfalls, hard earned lessons and the results so far are also discussed.

Characterization and Cytotoxicity Studies of the Rare 21:4 n-7 Acid and Other Polyunsaturated Fatty Acids from the Marine Opisthobranch Scaphander lignarius, Isolated Using Bioassay Guided Fractionation

“…Unexpectedly, no saturated fatty acids were detected which may be a reflection of the methods used to extract the organism. The semi-automated high-throughput bioassay guided fractionation strategy employed is focused on isolating drug-like compounds of certain molecular mass and polarity [4]. Such a strategy is necessary in order to analyze the vast number of organisms collected, clearly at the potential expense of overlooking interesting compounds not fulfilling the molecular requirements for isolation.…”

“…The marine organisms inhabiting the long and twisting coastline surrounding the northern parts of Norway are currently being investigated in a large scale search for novel compounds for drug discovery and development [4]. Numerous mollusks have been gathered and analyzed in the course of the methodical collection and screening of Arctic marine organisms.…”

Antioxidant and Anti-Inflammatory Activities of Barettin

“…The identification of barettin from G. barretti collected outside Northern Norway was the result of the antioxidant screening project at MabCent-SFI [10]. The compound showed strong antioxidant activities in biochemical assays, and we decided to further investigate the possibility of new biological activities of this molecule.…”

Access and Benefit Sharing Legislation for Marine Bioprospecting: Lessons From Australia for the Role of Marbank in Norway

“…MabCent‐SFI was established with funding from the Norwegian Research Council (43%), the UiT (32%) and commercial partners (biotechnology companies) (25%). It has been the main contributor of marine organisms and extracts for bioactive compound screening (MabCent‐SFI, Summary Report, 2007–2015, p. 17; Svenson, ), and has delivered 20 assays (test methods for screening) and more than 300,000 screening events in the search for bioactive compounds (anti‐cancer, etc. ), and so far three patent applications have emerged from the research.…”