science
Scientists search lor drugs from the sea Marine sources yield models for new drugs, prostaglandin precursors, polysaccharides, and toxins of unexpected use For medicinal chemists in the drug in dustry and academia, the sea is a new frontier. At last week's conference of the Chemical Institute of Canada in Halifax, N.S., the view from the fron tier ranged from experimental antibac terial substances from sponges to har vested commodities from seaweed. Land searches for pharmacologically active substances from plants, bac teria, and molds are not uncommon, and the major drug companies have combed the earth looking for biologi cal activity. In the two-year-old pro gram of Dr. John J. Denton and Dr. John S. Webb of Lederle Laboratories, Pearl River, N.Y., to search out ma rine sources of drug activity, however, the old ground rules don't seem to hold. For example, instead of minute traces of active substances, each sponge often yields hundreds of milli grams of antibacterial compounds. However, Lederle does not expect to harvest marine sources for drugs, but instead hopes to find model molecules from marine sources for laboratory syntheses. As it happens, one Lederle compound of great interest doesn't protect test mice from infections. Bromine. The Lederle compound is 3,5-dibromo-l(
