Baltic amber has been used in medicine for centuries due to its immune-boosting, wound-healing, pain-relieving, anti-inflammatory, anti-infective, anti-fungal and anti-cancer properties. This image is a schematic representation.
Researchers have found that amber, a fossilized conifer from the Baltic Sea, has shown considerable efficacy in treating human diseases and may be used to develop new drugs to fight drug-resistant bacteria such as Staphylococcus aureus. Once resistance (or drug resistance) is developed, the chemotherapeutic effect of the drug is significantly reduced.
Staphylococcus aureus Belonging to the genus Staphylococcus, Staphylococcus aureus* represents a common foodborne pathogenic microorganism, and is the most dangerous of all common staphylococcal bacteria. These Gram-positive spherical bacteria often cause skin infections, but can also cause pneumonia, heart valve infections and bone infections.
The Baltic Sea in Northern Europe is home to the world’s largest amber deposits, which originated from the now extinct coniferous species.
Baltic amber has been used in medicine for centuries because of its immune-boosting, wound-healing, pain-relieving, anti-inflammatory, anti-infective, anti-fungal and anti-cancer properties.
A group of researchers at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, has extracted compounds from Baltic amber that have therapeutic effects and may lead to the development of new drugs against drug-resistant bacteria such as Staphylococcus aureus.
Although Baltic amber has been widely used in folk medicine, its bioactive components have not been fully studied in academic studies to analyze data on its therapeutic effects.
Dr. Elizabeth Ambrose, a researcher in the Department of Medicinal Chemistry at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, who led the study, said they have extracted and identified several compounds in Baltic amber that are active against Gram-positive, drug-resistant bacteria.
“It is known from past research that Baltic amber contains chemicals that have the potential to be new antibiotic-like drugs, but they have not been systematically studied.” Dr. Ambrose said.
Dr. Ambrose and her colleague, Connor McDermott, who is currently pursuing a PhD at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, analyzed samples of Baltic amber.
McDermott explains, “A major challenge was to prepare a uniform fine powder from the amber pebbles that could be extracted with solvents.”
The team used gas chromatography-mass spectrometry to identify dozens of compounds in the powdered amber extract, including rosmarinic acid, dehydroabietic acid and palmitic acid, 20-carbon tricyclic organic compounds with known biological activity.
McDermott also said one of the most important findings is that these compounds are active against Gram-positive bacteria, such as certain Staphylococcus aureus, but not against Gram-negative bacteria. “This means that the composition of the bacterial membrane is important for the activity of the compounds.” He said.
The team also compared compounds extracted from Baltic amber samples with those from the Japanese golden pine tree (Sciadopitys verticillata), which is a close relative to the extinct conifer tree, mentioned at the beginning of this article, which produced resins that evolved over the long years to become the current Baltic amber.
The researchers are excited to have come up with this result, and they believe that rosmarinic acid and its derivatives could potentially be an untapped source of new drugs, especially for the treatment of infections caused by Gram-positive bacteria, which are becoming increasingly resistant to known antibiotics.
*Editor’s note: The Gram stain, founded by Danish pathologist Christain Gram in 1884, is an important discriminatory stain in bacteriology by which bacteria can be identified into two major groups: Gram-positive (G+) and Gram-negative (G-) bacteria.
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