Marinomed set up in Austria for drug development

A new Austrian drug development firm, Marinomed, has gone into operation in Vienna, with the aim of extracting drugs from marine fauna, especially corals. The company is an offshoot of the veterinary university in Vienna. It says that some 5% of marine organisms produce substances which are of therapeutic interest compared with only 1% for plants. Marinomed is studying organisms that can reproduce themselves in an aquarium and is restricting its attention to those that can be chemically synthesized or extracted as cell cultures. Early work is focusing on anti-inflammatory molecules for the treatment of atopic eczema, conjunctivitis, rhinitis and asthmatic allergies.