URI_Research_Magazine_Momentum_Fall_2017_Melissa-McCarthy

Satellite image of phytoplankton bloom off the coast of Eastern Australia.

“This is the very forefront of drug discovery,” he says. “We’re very far away from creating an actual therapeutic, but natural products have a long history of being effective therapeutics – they generally represent about 75 percent of all the therapeutics you find – so we’re optimistic.” He starts by collecting what he calls “a bucket of muck.” Off the coast of Texas, for instance, he and colleagues from Texas A&M University and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration collected buckets full of blooming algae – most of it cyanobacteria – for examination in his URI laboratory.

“Natural products have a long history of being effective therapeutics – they generally represent about 75 percent of all the therapeutics you find.”

- Matthew Bertin

Fall | 2017 Page 25