Why has PharmaMar centred its efforts on the sea? The oceans cover 70% of the Earth's surface, and correspond to 90% of the biosphere. For millions of years, innumerable forms of marine life have evolved to produce an immense variety of chemical entities of exclusive sophistication. Among these, there are molecules with potent biological activities, developed as a form of biochemical warfare to survive in an extremely competitive environment. PharmaMar has identified the antitumour potential of these molecules, and is actively developing them as innovative treatments for cancer.

To investigate marine resources, PharmaMar employs experts in marine biology who travel the world's oceans obtaining small samples of the local flora and fauna of selected places. The samples obtained are taxonomically identified, sent frozen to our research facilities in Madrid and are incorporated in PharmaMar's exclusive library, which already has thousands of samples of marine origin.

PharmaMar supports the protection, conservation and sustainable use of the valuable marine resources. Our pharmacological discovery approach not only contributes to the development of possible new treatments from just a few grams of sample of marine origin, but also to the greater knowledge of the local marine ecosystems and their conservation. The resulting information is centralised in our R&D database in order to optimise future exploration and is also shared with the local communities and teaching institutions.

PharmaMar has created a collaboration network to speed up research into its collection of potentially active agents. This network includes marine biology and biochemical centres, which have facilitated access to marine samples (microorganisms and macroorganisms), as well as world-class basic and clinical science researchers.

Small quantities of the samples are processed and analysed in our systems of biological models, specifically developed for the detection of antitumour activity. The fractionation of the samples using chromatological techniques allows the rapid isolation of molecules of interest and the elucidation without dilation of their chemical structure.

Next, the molecules with promising antitumour activity are subjected to pharmacological chemical programmes to establish a suitable production mechanism via chemical synthesis, thus avoiding the need to resort to the natural source. These programmes have the result of generating synthetic chemical analogues of the originally isolated molecules of marine origin, which gives rise to a complete family of active antitumour compounds and, often, candidates with a more suitable pharmacological profile. The synthetic analogues also provide valuable information on the structure vs activity relationship (SAR), which is used to additionally refine the chemical structure and to improve the pharmacological properties (maximum activity and minimum side effects).

With this approach, we continually discover new molecules equipped with exclusive mechanisms of action (MoA), which represents a great opportunity to advance in basic sciences and, more importantly, it opens potentially new channels for the treatment of cancer.

In vivo model systems are used to determine antitumour activities and the pharmacokinetic and toxicological profiles of the molecules that have a promising in vitro biological antitumour activity. Then, the candidates are proposed to the regulatory bodies for their inclusion in clinical trials.