Looking for medicines among Arenal lichens

The Arenal Volcano National Park is a great laboratory for scientists, which is why that they are now searching for compounds in these fungi that can become medicine. To do this, experts from the National Biodiversity Institute (INBio by its initials in Spanish) are searching for plants, fungi and lichens in the vicinity of this volcano.

Lichens are the union of two or three organisms that act as one and may be algae, fungi and cyanobacteria. There are already results from studies in this area; out the 100 lichens studied, one could become an antibiotic.

It's good to keep in mind that the constant use of antibiotics makes the bacteria that cause the disease become resistant to the drug. Therefore, new ways must be found to eliminate them, hence the interest in this investigation. Although there is already a positive result with lichen, INBio experts suggest that it could take 15 to 20 years to obtain a new medication from an organism.

The investigation was conducted by INBio, in conjunction with Michigan and Harvard Universities, the latter the general coordinator of the investigation and the one that will be conducting the final tests using a robotic system.

Lichens are an extremely important ecosystem in rocky ecosystems such as rocks of volcanic origin. After a volcanic eruption, lichens arrive and start breaking down the rock surface, which in turn allows dust accumulation and fertilization of the earth, placing nitrogen in the ground which plants need to grow.
Lichens reach INBio and are subjected to two different processes. The first is to obtain an extract of all the compounds by using substances such as ethanol; the second is the isolation and cultivation of micro-fungi living within the lichen. Each one may contain between 4 or 5 different species.

The fungi from this second process are cultivated and induced to secrete substances. In the end, both the extracted and cultivated substances are compared with a database in search of a new possibility of converting them to medicine. Out of 3,000 fungi, they have been able to obtain 20,000 samples which have been sent to Harvard.

Thanks to this research between 7 and 10 species of micro-fungi entirely new to science are obtained annually.

At TicosLand.com, we hope that initiatives such as these continue to be processed in our country and if it the possibility of finding medicines turns out to be positive, that the proper procedures are followed to ensure that Costa Rica has control of the discoveries, since the proper legal procedures are not commonly applied and this is when countries such as the United States rush to cover such findings and make it seem as if it is theirs when the source is really Costa Rica.