Scientists Explore ‘More Efficient’ Antibiotics in the Oceans

03 Dec. 2018

Director of Center of Excellence in Marine Biotechnology at Sultan Qaboos University, Sergey Dobretsov, touched on solutions that can be provided by marine biotechnology and marine natural products.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), antibiotic resistance happens when bacteria change and become resistant to the antibiotics used to treat the infections they cause. It could be due to over prescribing of antibiotics, patients not finishing their treatment, over-use of antibiotics in livestock and fish farming, poor infection control in hospitals and clinics, lack of hygiene and poor sanitation and lack of new antibiotics being developed.

The economic cost of antibiotic resistance has been recorded as 1.5 billion Euros per year in European Union and 20 billion dollars in the United States.

“Although there is limited information about the extent of use of antibiotics and resistance, the data available suggested that the resistance is increasing,” explained Dobretsov.

Marine biotechnology might be provide answers according to Dobretsov, “Marine biotechnology is the industrial, medical or environmental application of biological resources from the oceans. Oceans cover 70% of our planet and they have high biological diversity. Only 11,000 compounds have been isolated compared to 155,000 terrestrial compounds.”