3. Conclusion

After a difficult start at the end of the 1950s, the marine environment and its biodiversity now represent a privileged field of investigation for the search for new molecules. Indeed, after some forty years of increasingly intensive research, the results are more than satisfactory: six drugs for every 25,000 chemical entities described (corresponding to 1 drug for every 4,166 molecules), which is two to three times higher than the average observed in pharmaceutical industry screening processes (1 drug for every 8,000 to 10,000 compounds tested). What's more, as detailed above, some twenty molecules are in advanced stages of clinical development and therefore likely to become new drugs in the next few years.

Supply problems are increasingly prompting researchers to turn their attention to symbiotic micro-organisms (bacteria and cyanobacteria), which are often the...