The Bioactive Compound and Mechanism of Action of Sea Cucumber (Holothuridae) as Anticancer: A Review

Abstract

The extreme development and resistance towards cancer drugs, and also the high toxicity, drug resistance and side effects of cancer chemotherapy drug triggers us to develop new drugs as one of the alternative substitutes or combinations of cancer drugs, one of the resources come from marine biodiversity especially sea cucumber. The bioactive compound from sea cucumber can inhibit cancer cell growth with the various mechanism. This study aims to analyze chemical composition, bioactive compound from sea cucumber to inhibit cancer cell line and to analyze mechanism of action of sea cucumber as anticancer with the most recent research studies. The result shows sea cucumber contained protein 44-82%, amino acid, fatty acid, collagen, peptide, micro essential. Each sea cucumber species produced the different secondary metabolites that can use as anticancer. Sea cucumbers contain triterpene glycosides, saponins, holothurin A, stichoposides, frondoside, cucumariosides, dsechinoside, fucoidan, triterpenoid aglycones (philinopgeni), non-glycosaminoglycan, sulfated glycans, sulfated polysaccharides, non-glycosaminosides) that can inhibit cancer cell line. Those bioactive compounds have a various mechanism such as apoptosis in cell line and mitochondria, antioxidative mechanism and membranolytic.