Above the Arctic Circle in the Lyngen Fjord of northern Norway, researchers on the “Helmer Hanssen” are searching for the next generation of antibiotics. In these sea organisms, they hope, are new bacteria to become those drugs.
“If no one finds new antibiotics for common infections, what will happen is we will go back to the pre-antibiotic age in which a simple cut could turn into an infection that becomes deadly,” said Marcel Jaspars.
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The early results are promising. Several compounds being tested in Norway and at Jaspars’ lab in Scotland are showing initial signs of antibacterial properties. A good start, with a long way to go, but Jaspars knows the hopeful legacy of the PharmaSea project and others like is around the world is to eradicate the issue of antibiotic resistance. Who knows where the next penicillin will be found? Perhaps, it will be in the icy Norwegian Arctic.
“It is always very exciting when you get to the stage where you are the first person to see a bacteria,” said Jaspars, “or the first person to identify the structure of a new molecule that has the potential at that moment, to be a treatment for a difficult disease.”
