Boat Bottoms, Barnacles and Modern Medicine:

Dan Rittschof Hopes the Drug Store Will Offer a Safe Substance to Keep Barnacles Off Boats p.3

Frustrated with the financial and regulatory barriers to introducing a new, unfamiliar product, Rittschof found himself at a dead end.

“Development of commercial coatings using natural products is blocked by cost, the time horizon to meet government
regulations, and the performance standards based on coatings with unacceptable environmental impact,” he wrote in a 2000 article of the journal Biofouling.

“If blocks are removed, the potential for environmentally acceptable solutions that combine natural products with organic biocides is high.”

Recognizing that was a big “if,” Rittschof turned his attention elsewhere. What about human pharmaceuticals? he thought. The main idea may have been around for more than 100 years, but only from a biological perspective and not from a chemical or engineering perspective. After all, barnacles and humans share something on a cellular level—metabolic pathways. Many drugs interfere with specific biochemical and neurotransmission pathways. Because many of these human pathways are old, evolutionarily, they occur in barnacles as well. Those same pathways are involved in the physical changes that allow barnacles to transform themselves from swimming larvae to stationary pests.

“There is a complex metabolic cascade that’s involved in that metamorphosis, and you should be able to interfere with it somewhere,” he said. “The drugs have known mechanisms and absolutely known chemistry, so if you find the right pathways to interfere with, you can pick the right chemistry.”

Rittschof, has explored most of the Beaufort area’s waterways, will have a new and distant place to paddle for this project —Singapore. He found little interest in his project in the United States.

But, a group of professors from National University of Singapore (NUS) invited him to work with them after he gave a speech two years ago in the Southeast Asian country. Home to global shipping, Singapore has a huge interest in the science of shipping, the marine environment and in intensifying its economic base.

The scientists at the NUS Tropical Marine Science Institutes operate a biofouling program that concentrates on biodiversity, ecology and larval studies. They are “trying to get a grip on fouling in the tropics which is poorly understood and sometimes almost anecdotal,” said Serena Teo, a research fellow at the institute and the principal investigator for the pharmaceutical study.

“Dr Dan’s project with us falls under the larval studies component,” she said via e-mail. “The concept is really simple: if you know how barnacles stick, you know how it won’t happen.”

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