Funded through the EU Horizon 2020 programme, the MARBLES Project will develop new methods for the sustainable collection and use of biological resources from marine environments and assess their commercial potential.
The marine environment remains a largely untapped and poorly understood source of natural products with potential for application in the pharmaceutical and food industries. Challenges include finding and identifying the bacteria and their molecules, extracting their active ingredients in a sustainable, effective way, and the commercial and regulatory difficulties of bringing a discovery from the lab to market. In the context of an increasing global population and the current climate and biodiversity crises, there is an urgent need to sustainably harness new compounds with pharmaceutical and nutritional applications. These are the issues that MARBLES will address.
