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The IRB Barcelona and PharmaMar invent a method to reproduce marine substances of pharmacological interest

By 6 de September de 2013November 18th, 2020No Comments
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The marine sponge Homophymia lamellosa is the natural source of pipecolidepsin A. Photo: PharmaMar.
 06.09.2013

The IRB Barcelona and PharmaMar invent a method to reproduce marine substances of pharmacological interest

Chemists from the Institute of Research in Biomedicine (IRB Barcelona) and from the R+D department of PharmaMar –based in the Parc Científic de Barcelona– have devised a new synthesis method with pipecolidepsin A, a compound that is active against eleven types of cancers and property of PharmaMar. This advance opens the door to copying and improving 38 natural molecules derived from marine sponges that are very promising for the treatment of various diseases.


In 2008 the Spanish company PharmaMar, dedicated to developing marine-derived drugs against cancer, isolated a promising substance called pipecolidepsin A from the sponge Homophymia lamellosa collected off the coast of Madagascar. The Combinatorial Chemistry group at the IRB Barcelona, led by Fernando Albericio, has been working alongside this company for twenty years. As part of a collaboration agreement, they worked together to reproduce pipecolidepsin A in the laboratory and have been successful in this endeavour.

The journal Nature Communications () now reveals the procedure after the company obtained the patent, in which the researchers at IRB Barcelona and PharmaMar appear as inventors. The two groups of scientists continue their lines of research and have launched an analogue programme to simplify the synthesis, reduce the time and cost of production and achieve a greater amount of material with which to start pre-clinical testing.

The amount in-hand is now enough to test whether the activity of the synthetic molecule is comparable to that of the natural one, which kills tumour cells in eleven types of tissue: lung, prostate, colon, pancreas, ovary, sarcoma, leukaemia, liver, kidney, stomach and breast.

Pipecolidepsin A belongs to the family of “head-to-side chain” cyclodepsipeptides, which is formed by a total of 38 known molecules. The advantage of these molecules, all of which are isolated from marine sponges, is that many show activity against, besides cancer cells, the HIV virus, resistant bacteria, and fungi of various types. Until now the pitfall was the synthetic reproduction.