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 Some large pharmaceutical companies are active in the field, which have internally developed competencies in marine biotechnology or have acquired promising small blue biotechnological companies to reinforce their activities. Research priorities and objectives are mainly driven by the aim of developing novel drugs, treatments and health care products. For the R&D activities in the sector, the key research priorities were identified already in the ESF document:  Increase the focus on the basic research (taxonomy, systematics, physiology, molecular genetics and (chemical) ecology of marine species and organisms from unusual and extreme environments to increase chances of success in finding novel bioactives;  Improve the technical aspects of the biodiscovery pipeline, including the separation of bioactives, bio-assays that can accommodate diverse material from marine sources, dereplication strategies and structure determination methods and software;  Overcome the supply problem to provide a sustainable source of novel pharmaceutical and healthcare products through scientific advances in the fields of aquaculture, microbial and tissue culture, chemical synthesis and biosynthetic engineering. Infrastructures The long standing tradition in marine and biotechnology research in many European coastal countries is associated with world class infrastructures, including research vessels, offshore equipment, coastal and offshore stations as well as cutting edge biotechnology facilities. However, a platform oriented connection of these infrastructures is still lacking and only few centres of excellence have been initiated, mainly due to the strong activity of clusters in France and Norway. The initiation of the European Marine Biological Resource Centre (EMBRC)149 could provide access to marine organisms (microbes, plants, animals) and newest techniques to the scientific community at large, including universities and industry. Socio-economic performance of the health sector Undiscovered cancer treatments from marine organisms could be worth between USD 563 billion (EUR 428.5 billion) and USD 5.69 trillion (EUR 4.33 trillion), according to a recent study150. Researchers estimate that there may be as many as 594,232 novel compounds waiting to be discovered in unstudied marine species, and that these could lead to between 55 and 214 new anticancer drugs. The study only accounted for anti-cancer drug revenues. In reality, these chemicals from the sea can have numerous other biomedical applications including antibacterial, antifungal, antiviral and anti-inflammatory uses. The researchers used a mathematical model to predict the value of undiscovered anti-cancer drugs from marine sources. Estimates based on economic data for existing anti-cancer drugs suggested that these novel compounds could be worth between US$563 billion and US $5.69 trillion, depending on estimates of total biodiversity and on the discount rates applied to calculate net present values. This economic assessment only included direct market values - in reality, improved cancer treatment is likely to lead to numerous indirect economic and social benefits that are only partially reflected in their market value. Access to finance is a key issue for this sector: It has been commented that few investors are keen to take risks in these new technological developments. Businesses may access financial through various national funds in Europe at the initial stage. However, according to interviewees, businesses seem to struggle during the second and third rounds of funding, lowering their growth potential. 149 http://www.embrc.eu/ 150 Erwin, P. M., Lopez-Legentil, S., & Schuhmann, P. W. (2010). The pharmaceutical value of marine biodiversity for anticancer drug discovery. Ecological Economics. 70: 445-451 122 Study in support of Impact Assessment work on Blue Biotechnology

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