The Ocean Pharmacy, The Future of Drugs from the Sea with Dr. Marc Slattery and Dr. Larry Niles

The future of our pharmaceuticals are from down under.... the surface of course!

Coral reefs are the new tropical rainforests when it comes to drug research. When you think about it, how else do you protect yourself when you are a sea sponge, you can't move, don't have any spines or spikes and are free game for any of the thousands of species living nearby? Well chemistry of course! Turns out some of this chemistry may help with the future of our pharmaceuticals!

And then to our crabbiest ally that you never knew about! The fact that we rely on Horseshoe crab blood to test all of our internal medical devices and vaccines is stunning! And the fact that we are affecting the environment in such a drastic fashion yet have a synthetic alternative that we can turn to is wild. Yet we still remain crab vampires in the name of healthcare!

For more information on the future of drugs from the sea and Dr. Marc Slattery's research click here. To watch his Ted talk "Drugs from the Sea: What do we lose when Coral reefs die?" click here.

For more information about the Horseshoe Crab Recovery Coalition Click here. Check out  Dr. Larry Niles blog about his work right here.

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Transcript

David Evans: 0:23

I'm sorry, bear with me this podcast is going to start on a very unusual note, HIV, leukemia, lymphoma, lung, pancreatic and breast cancer, herpes, and Ebola. So bizarrely, this is not only a list of viruses and cancers and diseases that you would hope to avoid. But all of these diseases also have one thing in common. They can all be treated by compounds that are found in the same organism naturally occurring. Now, you're probably thinking, Well, that's pretty crazy. There's probably some type of tree in the Amazon, we're always hearing about how that's going to be the new place where all of our future drugs will come from. But I bet you've guessed already that based on the episode topic, the organism we're talking about, doesn't live on land, and it doesn't live in the Amazon. But it does live underwater. Alright, ladies and gentlemen, drumroll please. It is a bland looking sponge from the Caribbean. Yes, you heard that correctly. A sponge from the ocean provided the chemical compounds that we use now to treat cancers and viruses, and many other different diseases. Now, I'm really looking at a picture of it right now. And it doesn't look like anything that's very interesting. You wouldn't really stop to think twice about it if you're scuba diving or snorkeling past it. But this bunch, oh, gosh, I have to pronounce it now. Tech Tip to thigh krypter. I don't know if that's right. Or it also goes by crypto Theca. Which is way easier to say. This one species of sponge has made it possible for us to make huge advancements in treatments of different virus and cancer diseases. And it's only one sponge. Now imagine the world is 70% oceans. How much have we actually explored it? And what else is there for us to discover? In this episode, we dive into the topics of how we already use the oceans for our own health care purposes. And what possibilities are there still in the ocean that we have yet to discover? That sir nippy Oh me too low in 02. Marry a cheap, Chinese way. Why natural? Water we doing? And how can we do better? Your one stop shop for everything water related from discussing water, its use in the organisms that depend on it for all the global issues that you really never knew all had to do with water. I'm your host, David Evans from the aquatic biosphere project. And I just want to ask you something. What are we doing? And how can we do better? About 33% of the drugs that we use today in modern health care come from natural sources. One good example of this is morphine. Morphine naturally occurs in the poppy family, and also can be found in the family of hops and mulberry trees. We even produce it in our own bodies, but just a very low concentration, so you get more of it from the poppy family. The next 33% of drugs were inspired by nature, so they occur naturally, but they need a little bit of tweaking to have peak performance in the human body. A good example of this is how we got aspirin from the bark of the weeping willow tree. willow bark has been used as a medicine for over 3500 years. willow bark contains the active compound called salicin. And while salicin will still give you the similar effects of aspirin, it'll give you a really irritated stomach. So in 1898, I see the Salic acid was synthesized as a more stomach friendly version of salicin. And that's the aspirin that we still use to this day. The final third of drugs on the market is looking at the problem completely differently. It's looking at where's the problem? And what can I create to specifically addressed those receptors in the body or those effects in the body? So with all of that in mind, about two thirds of all of the drugs that we use to this day, are either inspired by or come directly from nature. As a species, we've been exploring our terrestrial ecosystems for 1000s of years, discovering what can cure what, but how long have we actually been exploring underwater? Over 80% of the total biodiversity, all of the species in the world exists in our oceans. And specifically, most of them are in coral reefs. So the question is, how do you go from the coral reef to the pharmacy?

Dr. Marc Slattery, University of Mississippi: 5:47

Sure. So I'm Mark Slattery, I work at the University of Mississippi and the School of Pharmacy, which is funny, because I'm actually a classically trained marine ecologist, my research interests while they've been on coral reefs for a number of years, but more specifically, I'm interested in the chemicals that marine organisms produce and why they produce them. And as an ecologist, I'm more interested in the specifics of how they work for the organism that's using them, the School of Pharmacy, sort of recognize that the work I was doing had some application to drug discovery drugs from the sea. And so that's sort of become a secondary interest of mine over the years, and I got that that's what we'll be talking about a little more today, I'm sort of in the group that is, let's go to nature. And let's see what nature tells us. And again, as a chemical ecologist, I recognize that there's things the animals are teaching us. So a lot of these compounds are coming from organisms that are attached to the bottom, like sponges and soft corals and things that can't run away. I mean, in a, you know, terrestrial system, you know, you have animals that run away from predators or get away from competitors, all sorts of situations. But if you're stuck in one place, and you don't have like armor or something to protect you, then oftentimes you got to produce chemistry to deal with your situation. For instance, if it's a feeding deterrent compound, there's something nasty there. And then we take it into the lab and say, Well, you know, that didn't taste very good, maybe that'll have some activity. More recently, my wife and I are dealing with with issues and coral diseases. And we recognize that these are animals that have primitive immune systems. And so one of the ways they dealt with diseases, much like we do, their immune system is chemistry. And so we say, well, you know, we're out on the reef, and we're seeing, you know, this individuals disease, this individuals disease, and this one right beside it isn't, isn't picking up the disease, and what is it about it? Well, it's producing more chemistry. And so we'll go in and find the compounds that are knocking out those diseases and say, Okay, well, that knocks out a disease and a quarrel, maybe it'll lock out or disease. And in a human being, we've taken those approaches just going in and sort of looking at the environment and, and sort of parsing out what the environment is telling us. That's our approach with chemistry in the sea.

David Evans: 8:14

It's weird to think of getting medicines from a sponge who lives in a pineapple under the sea. Sorry, I could not resist getting drugs from a sponge who lives at the bottom of the ocean, because our species are just so different. But it makes sense to get chemistry from organisms that can't run away. They don't have big teeth, they don't have big spines, they can't do anything really, other than make chemicals. I mean, an example of chemical warfare on land is skunks. No one wants to mess with a skunk. No one wants to get sprayed. So same goes underwater. So I'm really curious, is this a new field? Are we just starting to dip our toes into the ocean per se? On what drug possibilities there might be out there? Or is this something we've been looking into for a long time? We know quite a bit about and we're, we have a number of drugs already on the market.

Dr. Marc Slattery, University of Mississippi: 9:07

Yeah. So let me back up and say that we're still sort of in our infancy relative to drug discovery from the seas. Okay. And that's because I mean, scuba diving started with Jacques Cousteau, what, you know, 5080 years ago, something like that. So we've had far less time doing research in the oceans than we have in tropical rainforest, and so on and so forth. So with that caveat, there are a few examples. But there certainly aren't as many examples. If you look in the ancient literature about 3000 years BC in China, they were actually taxing the public for a medicine from the sea. And we don't know what that medicine is. It's just written up that way. So people have been looking at the oceans as a source of even drugs for you know, the better part of 5000 years now, which is pretty pretty amazing. When you think about it, you know, whereas tropical rainforest indigenous people have utilized their plants for drugs sources, people were recognizing there's things to deal with in the ocean. We know more specifically a few 100 years ago that ancient Hawaiians actually used to dip their spears into tide pools into an X organism looks a lot like an anemone. It's called palette poly Thoa that produces a toxin really strong toxin called poly toxin. And they used it much the same way that indigenous rainforest tribes use poison dart frog secretions to paralyze their prey. And so there was a recognition that there is something powerful in in these animals that is toxic, and is ultimately might become a source of a plant. So there's been some use of the oceans over the years with what we now recognizes as a chemical source. And what the 1950s was a first example of somebody who actually extracted a sponge and had an ame crypto Theca, because it was very cryptic, it actually lives in the sand grains and such. And he isolated two compounds that were known as era a and era C. And then again, like I mentioned, using them as sort of inspiration. He then went to the lab and sort of built his own versions of those, one of them became an antiviral compound used, I think, for herpes viruses, and the other one became sort of an anti cancer compound that was sort of the beginning of, of drugs from the sea, as it were. And around that time, there were several chemists who were starting to go in and make collections and, and drag out compounds. And on average, about 5000 compounds every year are found mostly from sponges, sponges seem to be a very rich source of compounds.

David Evans: 11:57

So once these compounds are isolated, so we have the specimen that produces this compound, we're able to isolate it, then we can bring it back to a lab, and we can run it through a bio assay. So what this means is we can test to see if this will fight against a virus or fight against cancer forming agent. So now we're collecting 5000 different compounds every year. So what's the next step for these potential drugs? How do they go from the bio assays to eventually onto our pharmacy shelves? And what are we already using that we may not know actually comes from the sea.

Dr. Marc Slattery, University of Mississippi: 12:33

Nowadays, there's probably a half a dozen compounds that are actually worldwide being used as drugs. Not all of them are here in the United States. I think the United States only has one that has been actually approved through clinical trials and whatever else and that's something that comes from the cone snail. Oh,

David Evans: 12:56

sorry, sorry, sorry, the cone snail is no joke had to jump in. So they have these beautiful shells. There's lots of different species. The problem is, they have these hypodermic like needles in their mouths, that if you pick it up, it might just Dart that needle into you, and inject its venom. Now, some of the venom isn't as bad. It depends on the species, but some goes from a beasting up to being enough to actually kill you. So take a look at these shells online. They're gorgeous shells. And remember that next time you go to the beach, don't pick up every shell you see. Sorry, right back to you, Mark.

Dr. Marc Slattery, University of Mississippi: 13:31

Oh, it's again, a toxin. It's used by the cones to paralyze their prey, and it goes by the name Xin Kona tide, it's used in medicine as a painkiller. It's actually 1000 times more powerful than morphine. It doesn't have the addictiveness. So it's a very, very good compound for pain relief. It's typically given only in a hospital setting, it has to actually go into the spine. And so it's not something that you get on your shelves per se, but it is a very powerful and important tool in surgery. But the other compounds that are out there in different countries, there's one that comes from a toolkit, called a kind of sit in that is an anti cancer agent. Oh,

David Evans: 14:14

sorry. Another fun fact with Dave So tunicates, otherwise known as sea squirts group of marine animals, they spend most of their lives attached to docks, or rocks or undersides of boats. And they don't really look like much they look like a glob a colored blob, but they're about 2.5 centimeters. And they mostly look like they're some type of sponge. But funnily enough, they're actually closer related to humans than they are to other invertebrates. Yeah, they're closely related to the Core Data family, so everything with a spinal cord, who knew okay, sorry, back to you, Mark. My apologies.

Dr. Marc Slattery, University of Mississippi: 14:50

Oh, oh, a really interesting one that's out there is something called suitor terrorists and it comes from a gorgonian or like a sea fan that occurs in the Caribbean. It's actually an anti inflammatory agent, but it's actually being used in Estee Lauder resilience. So apparently, the compound of interest in that that I guess, makes your face better or whatever, gave sort of an inflammation response. So you people's faces would kind of get read and stuff like this. So they actually added some of this pseudo terrorists in in there to actually knock down the inflammation response to everything else that was in the, in the compounds that's being used. So there's there's some interesting leads out there is interesting history of testing these strings through time, we're still getting there. I'm not sure if I answered your earlier question on how a drug actually gets to market. But the reality is, is, you know, it's often somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 to 20 years to get through the three phases of clinical trials, because classical clinical trials, you know, you might get 10,000 People with the drug, but then you're gonna want to watch him for four or five or six years to see what any long term side effects are. And so drug discovery efforts can take quite a while the part that I met in which is in the very beginning, where you grab something from the field, and you start the process in the lab, that might be a year or two, but at some point, we're going to have to pass it off to the sort of the pharmaceutical industry. And for every, usually 1000 leads that you put into the pipeline, you're lucky if you get one out. So it is a numbers game. And so then if you sort of look at the number of years that we've been doing drug discovery in the ocean, and you map that out, it sort of makes sense that we're only at about five or 10 drug leads at this point. But I guarantee you, there are several in the pipeline right now that are doing pretty well, in phase one, phase two, and I predict that probably in the next, you know, three to five years, we'll probably see a doubling if not more, in terms of drugs from the city.

David Evans: 17:00

So maybe sooner rather than later, we will all need to be thanking that little sponge who lives in a pineapple under the sea. Now, this got me to thinking, we have all of these marine organisms that are living their lives in these coral reefs. And suddenly, we put a price tag on their head, suddenly, they're really important for this drug that needs to be out there. So it can cure cancer for everyone around the world. How are we going to regulate this? And what are we going to be able to do to make sure that there's a sustainable population of them, not only so that they're out there in the wild, but also so that we can make sure that we have enough to be able to provide as medication for ourselves.

Dr. Marc Slattery, University of Mississippi: 17:42

I guess one of the things I should point out, though, is since we are talking about coral reefs, and sort of their importance, is the issue of the sustainability of these drugs from the sea. So for instance, when you're leaving a coral reef, one of the reasons there's so much biodiversity, there's similar biomass to what you have sort of in the kelp forests of California, where there they only have, you know, a fraction of the number of species. So you might have more species on coral reefs, but you have fewer individuals. And so if one particular individual, whether that's a sponge, or a coral, or new to Brank, or something is providing that drug, then you run into an issue of supply. Okay, you can't just go out and sort of rape and pillage to get enough because there just isn't enough there. In fact, to enter clinical trials, you're required to produce one kilogram of the chemical that's going to be used in the studies and kilogram while, that doesn't seem like a lot, you know, what we're getting out of these sponges might be, you know, micro grams, or PICO grams. So you're talking about from any given individual, you know, scaling that up, you're talking about 1000s, if not 10s of 1000s of individuals to produce that amount of chemistry. So this has become sort of the big challenge of how do you make up that difference. So one of the reasons why the chemists are taking sort of their lead from the chemistry they find in the oceans, and then sort of developing it along in the labs by themselves, because you can do synthetic chemistry and produce more of it. It's awful and costly process, but it can be done. But there are a couple of other options that are available. There's aquaculture, there was something that was incredibly important to have, you could actually grow it and to see farming, you know, they farm a lot of terrestrial drugs and such from plants are being farmed, and then taken into a lab and extracted and used and so there is aquaculture for fish that we eat. And so one could arguably do that approach for these ones that are important for drugs. Another is the molecular biology era, we now have the opportunity to go in and pull out the genes that are responsible for the production and particular chemistry and that's, I don't want this to come off as like, well that's something we can just do. I mean it's not not at the age of Jurassic Park yet. We want to sort of write knocking on the doors and there are challenges to pulling genes out putting them into a another animal and telling it to over produce that particular compound, but they're not insurmountable. And so again, we often archive the genome of any individual that we're working with, with the understanding that we can't necessarily do it today. But maybe in the next couple of years, we're going to be at the point where that is more of a reality than it was certainly when I started as a grad student in this business. So yeah, there are opportunities to be sustainable in this drug discovery effort as well.

David Evans: 20:50

Where there's a will, there's a way, but we'll also need to make sure that there are sustainability markers with these products and with these drugs, we need to make sure that we're being sustainable with how we're harvesting natural resources. Now, I realize we've been speaking for 20 minutes about drugs only. But there's so many other medical innovations that come from the seat. For instance, there's research going on to look at how clams and oysters can attach themselves to rock so that they don't get swept away out to sea during crashing waves and sweeping tides. And looking at if we can recreate these glues and attachments, that they are able to create themselves so that we can close wounds a lot easier and safer, and that'll biodegrade over time. And there's many medical marvels that we're already using. So I'd like to introduce the newest star of the show. This organism has been used in the biomedical industry for a very long time, I can almost guarantee you most of you listening to this podcast, will never have heard of this species, let alone would be able to identify it if you saw it. But I can guarantee you that at least one person that you know, has had their life impacted because of the use of this organism in the biomedical industry. This is a story about sustainability, about ecosystem collapse about large, large pharmaceutical companies, and also a ragtag group of concerned citizens, scientists, pharmacists, fishermen, all banding together to try to switch to a more sustainable synthetic alternative. Ladies and gentlemen, the horseshoe crab.

Dr. Larry Niles, Horseshoe Crab Recovery Coalition: 22:28

First of all, there are 425 million year old species. So they've been around the block, the goal here isn't to save the crabs because you know, they're going to be here long after humans are lost. So the goal is to try to build up the populations to make them more robust. So the crabs are, you know, roughly about dish size, the males are smaller females could get to the size of a baseball home plate, every medical product drugs, hip implants, pacemakers, whatever are tested with a biochemical from horseshoe crab blood called lysate. So what it does is the drug companies have created a testing assay that allows them to determine if there's any contaminant in all the various components of drugs, and then they test them in their final development so that the public can be assured that there's no contamination in these drugs or in whatever device going into your body. Previously, they used rabbits that test. So that's cruel, obviously cruel. And so this is a innovation for sure. The problem now is that the people who are doing the bleeding that are basically just after profit, they bleed them for eight minutes. So they put them up on a spike into the heart, and they bleed them as much as they'll bleed for eight minutes. Killing they say 15%, peer reviewed replications a 30%. But it could be more because an eight minute bleed. So a small crowd might bleed 30% of their blood, whereas a bigger female could lead up to half their blood volume. And so then they just let them go.

David Evans: 24:21

Well, I know the slogan is blood, it's in you to give, but this is going a little bit far. This is Dr. Larry Niles. He is an ecologist who used to be the head of the Endangered Species Program for New Jersey. He is now a big part of the horseshoe crab recovery coalition. And this might be strange because he's very much a bird guy. But as he likes to say everything that goes on with birds comes back to horseshoe crabs along the eastern seaboard, especially if you're somewhere near Delaware Bay.

Dr. Larry Niles, Horseshoe Crab Recovery Coalition: 24:52

Delaware Bay is one of the top world stop overs for Arctic nesting shorebirds who make these dramatically long distance migrations down to turtle flay go 10,000 mile journey on their way back they have to cross the ocean to get back to North America. deplete all their resources because they're flying up there seven days at a time and then they arrive in Delaware Bay. They arrived just as horseshoe crabs start spawning on the bay beaches. They lay pony eggs in clusters about six inches deep. But there's so many crabs that after a certain amount of spawning, every new crab that comes in to lay eggs digs up, the eggs have another crab, so they come up to the surface. And in that way the birds can eat them, the birds quickly gain weight on them at a time in spring, when all the natural resources are at their lowest level. These eggs allow them to build weight at the highest rates in the world very quickly, they get up to the weight that they need to go on to the Arctic, where they have enough fat that they can start nesting and lay eggs. And then by the time the chicks hatch, the Arctic is thawed. And then you know, life goes on. Pulling out the horseshoe crab block was a significant ecological action that nobody even realized because it was pulled out before anyone knew of the value. Like even here in Delaware Bay. The crabs spawn was amazing. I have a 1986 video of crabs mining, the harvest of horseshoe crabs was only maybe 100,000 A year or so in Delaware Bay. And then within a few years, it went up to 2.5 million. And it was because they wanted bait for a conch fishery. And very quickly, they the egg densities on Delaware Bay went from like 50,000 eggs per square meter. On the surface, it went as low as 7000. Right now it's about 10,000. But in 1986, could see in this video that there was wind rows of eggs. So it wasn't like there was an egg here, like there. It was piles of eggs pushed up by the waves, and all of that was going into the sea, and birds, fish crabs, like all the elements of productivity that we enjoy. We're all like, you know, just knocked out at the knees. Nobody documented these values before it occurred. And then we were left with trying to restore it after it was already done. And so that's where most of the other horseshoe crab populations are now. And, you know, I have to say it's where a lot of natural resources are right now.

David Evans: 27:53

The harvest of horseshoe crabs has really affected pretty much everywhere in North America, from the shorebirds in the Arctic that need that little pick me up snack on their way up north. All of those sport fisheries and commercial fisheries are impacted because they don't have that primary productivity, those eggs just aren't there to feed the fish when they need it. Horseshoe crabs are what we call a keystone species. So when this species is actually taken out of the system, no more horseshoe crabs, it affects everything else, the ecosystem really suffers. So what's actually happening to the horseshoe crab population, not only are they being harvested so that we can collect their blood, but they're also being harvested so that we can use them as bait to catch more bait so that we can catch even more fish from the ocean. Yes, there's a huge industry around just using horseshoe crabs as bait. Now, that's a big problem in itself. But at least the bleeding. Isn't there something we can do. Turns out we've already created a synthetic alternative. So why are we still bleeding crabs?

Dr. Larry Niles, Horseshoe Crab Recovery Coalition: 28:59

That synthetic was actually developed like over 10 years ago, and then one of the bleeding companies bought the patent did nothing. So essentially kept it out of the market. The patent expired several years ago. And so since then, drug companies like Eli Lilly have already used the synthetic for both their product development and for final product testing drug company, Pfizer just did a head to head test and found no differences but all the other leading companies have synthetic alternatives. One company that does most of the bleeding Charles River associates, it currently doesn't have synthetic alternatives developed so they challenged the efficacy of the synthetic and published the paper that said that they were not equivalent to they did a test. But groups within our coalition like Physicians for Responsible Medicine and the companies that are involved biome Are you is going along with Eli Lilly. It basically went to work and found that Charles River had deliberately manipulated by starting with something called Dirty water which is water that includes a contaminant that they knew the synthetic wouldn't detect. But now no drug company uses dirty water. So is a artificial restriction that led the FDA and the US Pharmacopoeia to essentially reverse their earlier positions. So right now, it's in that period of flux. The way it looks is because of Pfizer's new data, and because of the influence of the drug companies and our influence, because the other side of the equation here is that the pharmaceutical companies have committed to not using animal testing if they don't have to. And so this is pitting them against that ideal. I hope that it'll change this year.

David Evans: 31:07

Did you get all of that? All right, so quick recap. That was a lot of information. So we have this synthetic version of horseshoe crab blood that basically, we think can do exactly what the horseshoe crab blood does. And we don't have to drain the blood from horseshoe crabs, somewhere along Delaware Bay. Perfect. This makes a lot of sense, until you get large organizations involved that make a lot of money by collecting these horseshoe crabs, bleeding them out and selling their blood. So there might be incentives to skew the results of their tests. And that's what the horseshoe crab recovery coalition thinks might be happening. So they've been running their own tests, the members of the drug companies that are part of the horseshoe crab recovery coalition are trying to prove that the synthetic version is just as good as the horseshoe crab blood version. Now, the FDA has to make a decision on whether or not horseshoe crab blood and the synthetic are comparable, and we can make the switch to synthetic fully. The problem is, this is too important to test to make any mistakes, we need to be fully sure, and dot all of our i's and cross all of our T's before making the switch. But if there's a team that can get this done, the horseshoe crab recovery coalition, like Asha said that so many times now you must be so annoyed with me. They are the team to do it, because they are a huge group from very diverse backgrounds. And well might as well hear from the expert. So when

Dr. Larry Niles, Horseshoe Crab Recovery Coalition: 32:38

we first started out, we thought, you know, we bind together the usual players, you know, conservation group, and we did like National Wildlife Federation, National Audubon fenders for wildlife, they're all part of the coalition. But see, because we're talking about a valuable biochemical. It also brings in Eli Lilly, the drug companies and Physicians Committee for a Responsible Medicine is part of the coalition. But we also have groups like Manhattan defenders, and sport fishing guides association. So you know, what we're doing is binding together a coalition that sort of addresses this very difficult conservation problem. It's one that plagues every natural resource right now, whether it's forestry or agriculture industry is consuming, not just the sort of top level product of a system, they're commodifying every layer of that system so that they're basically removing all the productivity from ecosystems. And, you know, our whole climate change initiative depends on functioning ecosystems. So you can't rely on the normal method, a bunch of conservation groups get together and say, This is what it should be. This is more like, let's all work together to try to figure out how we can solve

David Evans: 34:02

it almost sounds like a joke of a bird biologist at sports, Fisher and pharmaceutical representative walk into a bar or something like that. It just, it seems like a weird, a weird group of people that work together. All jokes aside, they're doing great work. And I'm so excited to see where this goes. One of the main messages that I got both from Dr. Mark Slattery and Dr. Larry Niles, was about sustainability. So Dr. Mark Slattery, can you just finish it off with why we should care about preserving our coral reef ecosystems?

Dr. Marc Slattery, University of Mississippi: 34:40

So that's a great issue. And I've I've had long discussions with other individuals, including my own family who look at coral reefs, as you know, well, why are we spending money to save them when we've got people that are homeless, you know, drugs from the sea. This is certainly something that people can get their heads around if we find a new drug if we cure cancer or something that has huge implications for society as a whole. And so I'm quite happy to wave the flag for drug discovery, if it's going to help save coral reefs for future generations.

David Evans: 35:21

Thanks for listening to today's episode all about drugs from the see what we can get for the future of medicine from our oceans and freshwater systems. I'm your host, David Evans. And I would just love to thank all of the guests on today's episode. So starting at the first speaker, Dr. Mark Slattery from the University of Mississippi. To find out more about Dr. Mark's work, I couldn't find a specific website for him, but I'll leave links for the pharmacology department at Ole Miss, and also to his TED talk on YouTube, all about drugs from the sea. And also, I'd love to thank Dr. Larry nails from the horseshoe crab recovery coalition. Last time, I need to say that you can find out more about their work at HS crab recovery.org. And I'll leave a link for his own website as well where you can keep up to date with what's going on in the crab world and in the bird world. And basically, everything you need to know about Delaware Bay, be sure to check out the show notes as I'll leave links for all of these plus lots of other information, just in case this just whet your palate and you can't wait to learn more. Be sure to check out the show notes. It'll all be there and get excited the deep dive episode with both Dr. Mark Slattery and Dr. Larry Niles will be coming out in the next couple of weeks, so make sure you are subscribed so that you don't miss any of these episodes. I'm the host and producer David Evans. And I just like to thank the rest of the team specifically Paul Polman, Lee Burton, and the rest of the aquatic biosphere board. Thanks for all of your help. And to learn more about the aquatic biosphere project and what we're doing right here in Alberta telling the story of water, you can check us out at aquatic biosphere.ca. And we also have launched our new media company, a b n aquatic biosphere network that you can find that the public place dot online and search for the aquatic biosphere network channel, where we will actually be posting all of the video episodes that we're going to be creating this year. So tune in. They will be out for the next little while, but very excited to start sharing video content as well of our interviews. If you have any questions or comments about the show, we'd love to hear them. Email us at conservation at aquatic biosphere.org. Please don't forget to like, share and subscribe. Leave us a review. It really helps us out. Thanks and it's been a splash