Are life-saving medicines hiding in the world's coldest places? | Normand Voyer

For many people, you know, spending time in a dreamy location looks like this. But for me, it looks like this. As a natural product chemist, I've always been inspired by those wonderful chemical substances we found in nature, especially the chemicals that are made by living organisms from cold environments. And today, I want to bring you along my incredible journey into discovering the molecular treasure hiding in plants and other organisms thriving in the cold. Okay, now I know what you might be thinking. Norman, this just isn't for me. Chemistry was my worst subject in school. And I hate being cold. Why, on earth, should I keep listening? To which I say, stay with me. Because I'm convinced that there's some amazing chemicals hiding in the north, which perhaps mean that the next wonder drug to treat some of the nasty diseases that place us humans is just waiting to be discovered. But we might not discover it without your help. Are you intrigued now? Good. But before we go on with the chemistry, I want to give you a quick geography lesson. When we talk about the Canadian North, we talk about the land which is north of the 55th parallel. This includes most of the parts of Nunavik and Nunavut. And this land is really famous for beautiful landscape. It's famous for polar bears. It's famous for northern lights. And it's famous for Santa Claus. But despite these famous icons, the great white snowy north is still largely unexplored. And that's especially true at the molecular level. And my team and I hypothesize that northern ecosystems must be producing fantastic unknown chemical with fascinating properties. Why? Because of the harsh conditions and the unique stresses plants, fungi, and other organisms are experiencing in the North. They must produce chemicals to protect themselves from these stresses. For example, imagine the sunburn you would get, sunbathing for over 20 hours a day for a month. Well to survive you would need a tremendously good sunscreen That exactly what lichens have in northern ecosystem To protect themselves from UV radiations they fabricate defense chemical that blocks UV ray with an outstanding efficiency. And that's only one of the defense chemical we know about. And we believe that there are many, many more hiding up there. And a couple years ago, my group and I began our endeavors to prove this. Now, let me bring you to Umiwak, Nunavik, a small Inuit village on the coast of the Hudson Bay. And we were interested there. We collected and we looked at the grayish lichens that have been very scarcely investigated, Sterocolon paschale. Now, this lichens is found only in ecosystems with very harsh climate conditions. And almost nothing was known at that time on its chemical content, so we thought it was a great species to investigate. So even though Sterocolon paschale is quite abundant in Nunavik, we always try to minimize our footprint. So we sample only 100 grams of the lichens, and we brought it back to our lab at Université Laval in Quebec City. There we cleaned it, and then we crushed it at minus 190 degrees Celsius using liquid nitrogen. And this step is essential to release the natural substances within the lichen cell. We then transferred the sample in the form of pulp using different solvents in a process called maceration. And after we filter the sample and evaporate in the solvents, and we obtain what we call a crude lichen extract. And for natural product chemists, that's when the fun starts. Through careful chromatographic separation and many other techniques and years of work, we've been able to separate, purify, and identify for the first time ever 13 natural substances in stereocolon paschali. Now, I know your minds are exploding right now. But wait, there's more. From these 13 natural substances, it turned out that 11 were already been identified in other lichens. But two of the substances turned out to be unique in the world. Think about it for a moment. From over 340 natural chemical substances known on the planet from Nunavie is producing two unique substances A clear demonstration that organisms experiencing stresses in northern the ecosystem produces unique chemicals. Now, what are the properties of these chemicals, of these natural substances? We don't know at this point. This is still under investigation. And to me, and I hope to you now, this is the exciting part. Who knows if the next generation of much-needed anti-inflammatory agent or cancer-fighting drug or even cure for Alzheimer will be inspired by a chemical substance from a Nunavik lichens. Wow. Let me bring you now further north. in Nunavut, on the beautiful Baffin Island. And here the story began when a group of Canadian microbiologists identified for the first time ever in the sediment of the beautiful Kohlfrabisher Bay a macroscopic fungus. Well, the fungus was part of the genius of what we call mortiarella. And so they call it, with not much originality, Mortirella. But they also discover that this weird-looking fungus is synthesizing unique natural substances, the mortiamites. Now, why a rather strange-looking fungus is producing these natural substances is still a mystery. However, this sparked our curiosity. From past research investigations, we knew that natural substances that share some of the similarities with the mortiamide, compound isolated from the jetropha plants from Africa, add anti-malaria properties. Because they were able to neutralize the parasite responsible for the majority of malaria cases. Could the mortiamide possess the same properties? Well, to find out, we went back to the lab, and we synthesized sufficient quantity of all the mortiamides, and we studied their anti-malaria activity. And guess what? One of the substances, the mortiamide D, efficiently neutralized the parasite of malaria. But that's not the end of the story. even better, it was able to neutralize a strain of the parasite that is resistant to many, many malaria drugs currently used in the clinic. Isn that amazing You get the natural substances coming out from a produced by a macroscopic fungus isolated from the sediment of the icicle Frobisher Bay in the great white snowy north that could provide an answer to one of the most terrible tropical infections. It's a small world, after all. Isn't it? Well, it's time to talk about the scary news. The North, unfortunately, is undergoing transformation at an alarming pace. It is warming up faster than anywhere else on the planet. And this leads to a phenomenon called the greening of northern ecosystems. And this is particularly true with Nunavik. in which there's a shrub called Betula glandulosa that is progressing north very rapidly. Now, one of the immediate consequences of this rapid shrub growth is that it decreases the daylight on all lower plants and lichen. This is altering the complete food chain, and it's altering also the traditional way of living of indigenous communities. And, unavoidably, this will lead to loss of biodiversity. And one of the hidden consequences of losing biodiversity is the loss of chemo diversity. It is my great fear that with the loss of plants, lichen and fungus, some unknown fascinating natural substances and potentially wonder drug could be lost too. Now, this is why we think our work is important and timely. And this is why I hope by now you're convinced that you have a good reason to help protect the great white snowy north. For my part, I'm going to continue to search for molecular treasure in the north in the hope of finding novel arguments to provide stakeholders and politicians with good arguments for enforcing stronger and immediate measure to mitigate climate change. For your part, remember the story of Mortimer ID and how a discovery in the North could save lives in the tropics? We're all in this together. And no matter what corner of the planet you live in, you must do your part to save motherhood one molecule at a time. Merci beaucoup. Thank you.