Aquapharm is an innovative discovery company pioneering the development of new breakthrough products founded on the vast, untapped diversity of marine micro-organisms.

The company's goal is to harness this resource to rapidly develop next generation pharmaceuticals and novel, naturally derived functional food and personal care ingredients and products.

Founded in Scotland in 2000, Aquapharm Bio-Discovery is one of the first UK marine biotechnology companies that provides new 'bio-prospecting' approaches to source novel natural products from marine microbes.

The Company utilizes its proprietary knowledge and specialist skills to discover, isolate and culture marine bacteria and fungi as potential new sources of valuable pharmaceutical compounds and industrial biologically derived products

The evolution of new technologies and our growing understanding of biodiversity allows them to provide a better platform than chemical synthesis alone to discover novel solutions to drug development.

76% of all man's currently available pharmaceutical products have been derived from natural sources. The marine environment offers the best and highest chance of the discovery of natural products for the 21st century.

AquaPharm is actively engaged in exploiting the vast opportunity of new drug discovery from marine organisms. To date, only 5% of the marine environment has been described and it is estimated that between 500,000 - 5,000,000 (mostly micro-organisms) species remain to be discovered, representing a huge opportunity in the unearthing of new drug leads. By utilising its specialist knowledge of culturing and the fermentation of marine bacteria and fungi, AquaPharm intends to identify new antibiotics, anti-inflammatory and anti-cancer drugs capable of meeting unmet clinical needs of the pharmaceutical and industrial markets.

AquaPharm is also exploiting its science to develop commercial benefits in high yield bio-manufacture of nutraceuticals (vitamins, anti-oxidants and blocking agents) and industrial compounds (pigments, cosmetics and bio-catalysts).

Marine biotechnology company harnessing marine micro-organisms to develop high value products for application across the pharmaceutical, personal care and nutrition sectors.

The company is based at the European Centre for Marine Biotechnology in Oban, Scotland with a corporate office and labs in Edinburgh.

Central to the company is its development of new pharmaceuticals from its marine microbial collection to address areas of high unmet medical need including auto-immune diseases; tissue-damage caused by chronic and degenerative diseases and; antibiotics to treat drug-resistant infections.

Through a unified approach to the discovery of new functional actives, Aquapharm recognises that its collection of marine microbes also holds great potential for the food, beverage and personal care sectors and its Oceanx business unit is actively working with strategic partners to bring novel, scientifically backed ingredients and products to these markets.

These product development strategies are underpinned by the company's unique ability to culture, harvest and intelligently screen its microbial collection through an integrated discovery platform that includes proprietary induction technologies such as SeaRchâ„¢.

» Latest developments

Bertrand Lehuu - another prominent industry figure joins Aquapharm

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» Pipeline

What's in the pipeline?
The company is currently advancing a strong pipeline of new chemistry leads...