Bioprospecting: a CAM Frontier

With Volume 2 of eCAM, we begin to intensify the inclusion of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM)-related natural products derived from plants and from animals (1). There will be an attempt to focus on products from animals, since we know that the literature tends to be ‘glutted’ with products derived from plants (1,2). In either case, both sources of natural products provide a veritable cornucopia of sources of new CAM approaches that will emerge as important for future applications, including compounds isolated from marine microorganisms and phytoplankton, green algae, brown algae, red algae, fungi and certain well-known marine and terrestrial animals: sponges, coelenterates, bryozoans, molluscs, tunicates, echinoderms, earthworms and leeches (3,4). Very briefly, there has been an emphasis on new compounds (677 in 2002), together with their relevant biological activities, source organisms and country of origin. As a result, syntheses that lead to the revision of structures or stereochemistries have been included (114), including any first total syntheses of a marine natural product (5). The prefix bio of course signifies life, and prospecting is defined in several ways: ‘an extensive view of a landscape, a mental view of matters; an expectation, a possibility; a chance of success or advancement; a possible customer or client; to explore in search of something.’When put together, they fit the kinds of searches that will be explored in eCAM. Actually Muller has recently legitimized the terminology, and our rapid grasp of this possibility is now being rigorously exploited for the good of CAM (6,7)—a kind of resurrection of approaches used to define antibiotics and anticancer molecules (8). Because the literature concerning plants (herbals) is well documented (crowded and found in diverse journals), and because of space, this editorial will focus on a few selected examples of products from one particular animal group. This tack highlights the growing importance of a seemingly new area of work. In fact, many of these investigations are not new, but it is their reorientation toward more practical concerns that has driven this quest away from the search for the sake of the exotic animals themselves. Many of us, the new prospectors, began as biologists, comparative immunologists and invertebrate immunologists (8–10). Eureka in the words of Archimedes! Not about the physical principle concerning water, but about the existence of applicability of molecules derived from invertebrate immune systems! Clearly this firm grounding in biology and the resulting amalgam with immunology will lie at the forefront of efforts to bolster the pursuit or attempts at bioprospecting.