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

0:08This is Ted Health. It's your host, Dr. Shoshana Ungerleider. Imagine trekking through the icy landscapes of northern Canada. Not just for the breathtaking vistas, but in search of microscopic wonders. No, this isn't the plot of a sci-fi novel. Enter the fascinating world of Normand Voyee, a natural product chemist who believes that our planet's coldest corners hides some of its hottest secrets. Norman's quest to find peculiar fungi and strange lichens in the Arctic is also a search for medical solutions that may one day save lives. Again, this isn't the plot of a sci-fi novel. In this TED at Destination Canada talk, Norman's quest for molecular marbles is a tale of exploration, curiosity, and serendipity.

1:00Norman's quest to find peculiar fungi and strange lichens in the Arctic is also a search for medical solutions that may one day save lives. Again, this isn't the plot of a sci-fi novel. In this TED at Destination Canada talk, Norman's quest for molecular marvels is a tale of exploration, curiosity, and serendipity. Get ready to challenge your notion of treasure hunting and join Norman on his adventure, where even the tiniest molecules might hold world-changing potential.

1:36As a naturopathic 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 means that the next wonder drug to treat some of the nasty diseases that plagues us humans is just waiting to be discovered.

2:40But 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 bear. 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.

3:33And 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's exactly what lichens have in northern ecosystems. To protect themselves from UV radiations, they fabricate defense chemicals that blocks UV rays with an outstanding efficiency.

4:34And that's only one of the defense chemicals we know about. And we believe that there are many, many more hiding up there. And a couple of 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. Stero-Colomps Peschkele. 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.

5:28So even though stereoclonopascale 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 paschkeli.

6:44Now, 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 ,000 natural chemical substances known on the planet, that Sero-Colon Pashkali from Nunavie is producing two unique substances. A clear demonstration that organisms experiencing stresses in northern ecosystem produces unique chemicals. Now, what are the properties of these chemicals, of these natural substances? We don't know at this point.

7:43This 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 likens. 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 Coal Frabisher Bay a macroscopic fungus. Well, the fungus was part of the genius of what we call mortiarella.

8:40And so they call it, with not much originality, Mortirella species. 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, had anti-malaria properties. Because they were able to neutralize the parasite responsible for the majority of malaria cases.

9:37Could the mortiamide possess the same properties? Well, to find out, we went back into 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't 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.

10:33That 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 ecosystem. And this is particularly true with Nunavik, in which there's a shrub called Betuloglandolosa 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.

11:31This 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.

12:27For 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 D 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 mother hurt one molecule at a time. Merci beaucoup. Thank you.

13:28That's it for today's episode. Thanks so much for listening. This episode was produced by Costanza Gallardo, edited by Alejandra Salazar, and Fact Checked by Vanessa Garcia-Woodworth. Special thanks to Maria Lages, Farah DeGrange, David Biello, Daniela Badaresso, and Michelle Quint. I'm Dr. Shoshana Ungerleiter, and I'll talk to you again next week.