Title: The Rise of Conservation Medicine: How Medicinal Chemistry Can Prevent Mass Extinction
Medicinal chemistry expertise is urgently needed in the fight against mass extinction, according to Timothy Cernak, assistant professor of medicinal chemistry at the University of Michigan (U-M) College of Pharmacy. “Animals are dying at alarming rates, but they don’t have to. Modern bioscience has achieved remarkable breakthroughs in treating diseases in humans, and the same medications and science can be applied in the wild,” he says.
Local and global efforts to reduce environmental damage are ongoing, but they are not moving fast enough to save the many imperiled populations in the wild. “We are in the midst of a mass extinction. We are chasing mass die-offs around the world. Lowland gorillas, Argentinian penguins, the akikiki bird in Hawaii, loggerhead turtles in Florida. The list goes on, and many precious plants are also hanging by a thread,” Cernak says. “It’s critical to bring the power of modern pharmaceuticals and the dosing expertise of medicinal chemistry into conservation efforts.”
Cernak and a team of young scientists, including a local high school student, make a compelling case for establishing and nurturing the emerging field of conservation medicine in a research article published this week in the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry. “It’s hard-core science. It’s bringing the lens of medicinal chemistry and modern pharmaceuticals into the conversation to save other species,” Cernak says.
Medicinal chemistry can be the intervention needed to address one of the major drivers of the current mass extinction: wildlife disease. Cernak receives samples of dead and ailing species from around the world and tests chemical compounds on them to see which ones respond to disease-causing organisms. A significant focus is on fungus, the single-largest killer of amphibians.
Chemistry and pharmacy can play a crucial role in preventing extinction. “A long-term solution to mass extinction is to fix climate change and habitat loss using new technologies and new policies. As a bandage for the short term, chemistry in service of endangered species is needed,” the authors write.
Cernak is pushing for a new, impactful field of science. “At the higher level, my mission is to have pharmaceutical companies be involved in this space and young scientists view this as the field they want to go into — a field that doesn’t really exist at this point,” he says. “A more immediate goal is fundraising and more research as the field and the value of the field is established.”
Medicinal chemists interested in preventing extinction are encouraged to collaborate with zookeepers, foresters, veterinarians, entomologists, wildlife rehabilitators, and conservationists to learn about the challenges and solutions where conservation medicine could make an impact.
The emerging field of conservation medicine offers hope for countless species facing extinction and provides new opportunities for medicinal chemists to make a difference. “Streamlining drug and agrochemical discovery with automation and artificial intelligence is likely to usher in a future era of accelerated medicinal invention tailored to specific patient populations,” Cernak and his team wrote in their paper. The future of conservation medicine is bright, with exciting applications for threatened and endangered species.
Cernak’s co-authors include Tesko Chaganti, a student at Canton High School, Canton, Michigan; Chun-Yi Tsai, a graduate student in U-M’s Department of Chemistry; Yu-Pu Juang, a postdoctoral researcher in the Cernak Lab; and Mohamed Abdelalim, a visiting research investigator at U-M.