Establishment of a bioprospecting network: Searching for novel anti-cancer agents in plants and microorganisms.

The project will gather experts in the field of natural products chemistry, microbiology and bioactive compounds, cell and tumour biology to make a bioprospecting cluster. This cluster will work to shorten the translational pipeline from discovery of a bi oactivity to clinical trials. The main participants are Acad. Prof. Kaarina Sivonen, University of Helsinki, Finland, Prof. Andrew Marston, University of Free state, Blomfontein, South Africa, Prof. Bjørn Tore Gjertsen, Haukeland University Hospital and S tein Ove Døskeland, University of Bergen. Prof. Sivonen has worked for decades with isolation and identification of bioactive compounds from cyanobacteria, while Prof. Marston is an expert in isolation and identification of natural products from plants, u sing counter-current chromatography to isolate compounds in gram amounts. Prof. Gjertsen's research focus has been to investigate signalling pathways in leukaemia cells, with emphasis on acute myelogenous leukaemia. Prof. Døskeland has worked with biopros pecting from marine microorganisms for decades, and gained experience in bioguided isolation of anti-cancer compounds. By combining our forces, we believe that we have high chance for success in the search of novel compounds with potential as anti-AML dru gs. In addition to meetings to discuss strategies, we will exchange researchers from the different groups to transfer knowledge, and benefit from the expertise from the different groups. The project will be important to initialise international collaborat ion in bioprospecting at the University of Bergen