Question: How many new medicines have you discovered from the sea so far?

Sylvia Soldatou answered on 25 May 2020:

I can’t remember the exact number, but I have isolated more than 15-20 molecules from marine organisms. These molecules have shown anibacterial and anticancer activity when tested in the lab not in humans) but there is a long way to go for them to be become marketed medicines. Before a molecule becomes a medicine it has to undergo years of very expensive clinical trials. Most molecules fail early in the process , others fail in the last phase of clinical trials and some make it to the end. It takes 15-20 years to market a medicine, due to all the clinical trials that must be carried out to make sure the medicine is safe for the public