• Question: Do you think we could find a cure for coronavirus from the sea?

    Asked by anon-253421 to Sylvia on 6 May 2020.
    • Photo: Sylvia Soldatou

      Sylvia Soldatou answered on 6 May 2020:

      There is evidence that some marine organisms produce molecules with anti-viral activity, so I am confident that the marine environment could be a great source of medicines to kill viruses. Of course, it takes 15-20 years for a molecule to become a medicine on the market as it has to undergo plenty of clinical trials. Unfortunately most molecules produced by marine organisms fail during the clinical trial process.
      Currently, companies that work on the discovery of new medicines from the sea are testing their libraries (collection of isolated molecules) against coronavirus. Maybe something promising will come up soon!

Comments

  • modmia commented on :

    IMPORTANT: This question and its answers are about coronavirus (COVID-19). The information on this page might be out of date or wrong.

    For up-to-date health information and advice, please go to the NHS website: https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/coronavirus-covid-19/

  • sophiesteward commented on :

    It is possible, there are so many different organisms, and some medicines have been found from the sea in the past. Just like terrestrial creatures, marine life also uses other organisms for preventing and healing diseases. However, viruses can be incredibly hard to cure, and most tend to just run their course. With the way we develop vaccines we wouldn’t use other organisms.we tend to use inactivated vaccines mostly. That means we use a dose of the dead viral cells so the virus itself cannot cause any harm, but our immune systems will still respond and develop an immunity. That being said a different approach may be used for dealing with coronavirus since we are in the thick of it, inactivated vaccines are usually used in preparation for a viral outbreak, sucb as flu vaccines. Researchers are mostly focusing on antibodies from people who have fought the virus and seeing if it is possible to use the antibodies to treat and vaccinate against coronavirus. But they have many factors to weigh up before any treatment or vaccine can be developed