Why is the chemical novelty of marine compounds key for designing new therapeutics?
Answer
New scaffolds are needed to overcome pathogen/cancer resistance
The chemical structures isolated from marine sources often possess configurations entirely unlike those found in terrestrial drugs, providing medicinal chemists with entirely new molecular scaffolds. This structural difference is critically important because as human pathogens and various forms of cancer develop resistance mechanisms against established classes of existing drugs, entirely new chemical classes are required to successfully circumvent and overcome that acquired resistance. The ocean effectively offers readily available, structurally unique compounds that address this urgent need for novel mechanisms of action in drug development.
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