China News Service, Shenzhen, October 26th. Title: A "deep sea key" that opens a new path for the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases.
China News Service reporter Wang Jie
A piece of red krill from Antarctic waters was recently redefined at the "China Marine Economy Expo 2026" held in Shenzhen.
At the expo, a record for the purity of marine phospholipids was refreshed - the scientific research team issued a patent for the directional enrichment technology of marine phospholipids, which increased the content of marine phospholipids from the industry's long-standing 40% to 56%, to 95% for the first time. This is not a simple purification progress, but opens a channel for marine phospholipids to leapfrog from functional foods to medicinal excipients and innovative drug research and development.
Marine phospholipids are the third type of natural lipid resources after plant phospholipids and animal phospholipids. They have unique composition and structural characteristics. He Dongsheng, associate professor at the School of Pharmacy, China Pharmaceutical University, pointed out that it has outstanding medicinal development potential in new drug delivery systems. But for a long time, the purity bottleneck has restricted its application boundaries. This breakthrough of 95% ultra-high-purity marine phospholipids qualifies it as a core raw material for APIs, providing a new material option for innovative marine drugs and lipid nano-delivery systems.
Besides purity, the more critical breakthrough lies in "arrival".
Drug research and development for Alzheimer's disease is known as a natural chasm in the pharmaceutical industry. The disease-causing mechanism is complex, and clinical trials of single-target drugs have repeatedly failed. What is even more troublesome is the blood-brain barrier. This protective wall makes it difficult for 98% of small molecule drugs to pass through, and the delivery of large molecule drugs is even more difficult. The scientific research team uses 95% high-purity marine phospholipids as the core raw material to construct a targeted delivery route of marine phospholipids, trying to break through the difficulties of traditional drugs that are difficult to enter the brain, have narrow targets, are high-risk, and are expensive through the dual technical path of "efficient blood-brain barrier penetration and multi-target collaborative intervention".
This idea has been supported by preliminary verification. The scientific research team signed a special research cooperation agreement on Alzheimer's disease with Qingdao University to further deepen the research based on the previous project "Preliminary pharmacological evaluation of krill oil and high-purity Antarctic krill polyene phosphatidylcholine in the treatment of Alzheimer's disease".
Song Zhenhua, associate professor at the School of Pharmacy of Qingdao University, introduced that high-purity polyene phosphatidylcholine derived from krill oil can improve cognitive function and exert neuronal protective effects in mouse models of Alzheimer's disease, while reducing neuroinflammation levels and improving lipid metabolism disorders; in an in vitro blood-brain barrier model, this component shows higher transport efficiency across the blood-brain barrier. This means that deep-sea phospholipids are being validated as a potential drug delivery vehicle for the brain.
Behind the technological breakthrough is a systematic platform construction. The scientific research team integrated marine phospholipid directional enrichment technology, marine phospholipid delivery technology, and krill oil refining technology into a marine phospholipid targeted delivery platform, and conquered three key technologies: cold extraction of fresh shrimp, domestic substitution of pharmaceutical-grade phospholipid excipients, and clinical application of marine phospholipids. It also took the lead in launching krill oil quality evaluation and the development of group standards for marine phospholipid pharmaceutical excipients. From basic raw materials to delivery systems, from laboratory verification to industry standards, a closed loop of scientific research around marine phospholipids is taking shape.
From Antarctic krill to high-purity phospholipids, from intestinal absorption to blood-brain barrier penetration, every step along this path is redefining the scientific research value of marine biological resources. As molecules in the deep sea begin to learn to "find their way," the scientific research narrative of marine medicine is being rewritten.
