Is the era of marine medicine leading the blue economy coming?

June 8 is the world ocean day determined by the United Nations, and it is also the ocean Publicity Day of our country The ocean is the source of life, 80% of the earth's species live in the ocean Compared with terrestrial biological resources, marine organisms contain a large number of bioactive substances with novel structures and unique physiological functions Therefore, marine biological resources are regarded as an important source of new drugs and other bioactive substances with unique medicinal value, and a huge treasure house of natural medicine resources Since 2008, China's State Oceanic Administration, together with relevant departments, has continued to carry out world ocean day and national ocean Publicity Day The theme of this year's activity is defined as "pay attention to ocean health and protect the blue planet" As a pharmaceutical person, it is important to pay attention to the health of the sea, and how to seek health and drugs from the sea, maybe every pharmaceutical person should focus on the direction The fierce competition in traditional pharmaceutical industry of "jumping out of the Red Sea and exploring the blue sea" of overseas marine drugs has made many large pharmaceutical companies "exhausted" The development of marine drugs and the demand for drugs from the sea have become a new type of weapon for many multinational pharmaceutical companies to explore the market, and the field of marine drugs has been developed accordingly Among many marine drugs, cephalosporin C is the first one, which comes from marine fungi At present, it has developed into a mature cephalosporin antibiotic, and has been widely used in clinical Coincidentally, rifamycin, the first-line anti tuberculosis drug in the 1960s, also originated from marine bacteria Since then, more than 20000 new compounds have been isolated and identified from various marine animals, plants and microorganisms around the world They have a wide range of pharmacological activities, including anti-tumor, antibacterial, antiviral, anticoagulant, analgesic, anti-inflammatory and anti cardiovascular diseases Up to now, in addition to the cephalosporins and rifamycins mentioned above, there are also cytarabine, adenosine arabinoside, zikonotide, trobetadine, irebrin mesylate, arcatrix and omega-3-fatty acid ethyl ester, etc In addition, dozens of marine drugs for malignant tumors, trauma and neuropsychiatric diseases have also entered various stages of clinical research In 1985, after the first marine drug in China, sodium alginate was successfully listed, marine drugs such as glycosyl ester, FUCOSYL sulfate, Hynix, mannitol nicotinate and so on were approved to be listed one after another At present, Chinese scientists have also obtained a number of leading compounds of marine drugs for major diseases, among which more than 20 candidate drugs for malignant tumors, cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases, metabolic diseases, infectious diseases and neurodegenerative diseases are carrying out systematic drug evaluation and preclinical research The marine drugs in the phase 1-3 clinical study are lotong, k-001, d-polyglyceride, hsh971 and chitosan The above work laid a certain foundation for the industrialization of marine drugs However, in general, the research and development foundation of marine drugs in China is relatively weak, the technology and variety accumulation are relatively small, and the marine drug industry is still in the incubation period In the past 10 years, China's marine pharmaceutical industry has grown from 1.7 billion yuan in 2005 to 22.4 billion yuan in 2013, a dozen times increase The proportion of added value has been increasing year by year, especially from 2011 to 2013, which contributes more and more to the added value of major marine industries Although marine drugs have a great influence on the development of organic chemistry in the past few decades, it has to be said that compared with the scale of chemical drugs and marine economy, the quantity and output value of marine drugs are very small, and the research prospect of this subject is not very clear Based on this, the state and local governments at all levels have issued various favorable policies to support the development of marine drugs In 2015, Qingdao high tech Zone rose to a blue biomedical highland of 10 billion yuan, which was approved as the strategic alliance for technological innovation of Qingdao Marine biomedical industry; the second Fujian marine biomedical industry summit attracted 5.4 billion yuan of project investment; Tianjin printed and implemented the special plan for the development of Tianjin marine biomedical industry (2015-2020); the Department of education of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region and Qinzhou Jointly build the marine traditional Chinese medicine laboratory With the attention and support of all parties, the marine drug industry has developed rapidly In 2015, the added value reached 30.2 billion yuan, an increase of 16.3% over the previous year, leading the marine strategic emerging industry and becoming a highlight Although the achievements are gratifying, there are still many problems and bottlenecks in "resources, technology and products", and the development is facing severe challenges First of all, there are limited types of marine biological resources There are more than 20000 kinds of marine biological resources in China, among which there are about 7000 kinds of potential marine biological medicinal resources But at present, there are only about 1500 species that have been described or preliminarily identified, and less than 100 species that have been preliminarily developed and studied, and 80% of them are from coastal or offshore areas Secondly, the technical foundation is weak Although China's marine biotechnology has developed rapidly in recent years, it is obviously behind the developed countries in the world, especially in the integration and application of technology For example, the technology of high-density fermentation of marine microorganisms, co culture and utilization of marine symbiotic microorganisms is seriously backward; the technology of discovery and screening of drug targets is backward; the integration technology of standardized drug-forming property and efficacy evaluation is incomplete; the key integration technology of industrialization is seriously backward and so on Third, the product variety is single and the innovation ability is not strong The marine drugs approved for marketing in China and currently entering the clinical research are basically polysaccharide drugs, with a single variety, no chemical drugs or gene engineering protein or peptide drugs entering the clinical research or approved for marketing, reflecting from one side that the overall innovation ability of marine drugs in China is not strong, whether in research and development or in industry far behind the world's advanced level Summary: China is one of the first countries to use marine organisms as drugs There are 110 kinds of marine drugs in the early medical literature, such as Huangdi Neijing, Shennong Materia Medica, compendium of Materia Medica and so on After the founding of the people's Republic of China, the national Chinese herbal medicine collection, the Chinese Herbal Medicine Dictionary and the Chinese marine herbal medicine also included a variety of marine drugs However, in the global scope, the development of marine drugs in China is still very backward compared with western developed countries, which is closely related to the development of Western drugs in China With the coming of world ocean day, it is necessary to publicize marine culture and understand marine drugs Although it can not solve the objective fact that China's current marine drug research and development is relatively backward, at least one action and thought is on the way! 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