Drugs and leads from the ocean through biotechnology

Abstract

The ocean’s uniqueness represents an excellent source of resources and inspiration of diverse marine natural products with novel chemical entities and leads for the development of pharmaceutical agents. During the last 10 years, interest in research and development by the scientific community in this niche have continued as evidenced from joint ventures between academics, mainly partnered with industry. Drugs of marine origin that have now been approved represent excellent and novel alternatives for the following therapies and disease treatments. For neuropathic pain, a synthetic version of omega-conotoxin, produced by the tropical marine Conus snail is already on the pharmaceutical market. The ecteinascidins (ET-743) are marine alkaloid, anticancer agents isolated from Ecteinascidia turbinate, a colonial tunicate found in the Caribbean and Mediterranean Sea, and are successfully used for soft tissue sarcoma and relapsed ovarian cancer. The synthetic pyrimidine nucleoside Cytarabine, was originally isolated from the Caribbean sponge Tethya crypta, and approved as a chemotherapeutic to treat different forms of leukemia (e.g, meningeal leukemia, lym-phocytic leukemia). From this marine sponge, also the synthetic purine nucleoside analog, Vidara-bine, was developed as an antiviral drug against the herpes simplex virus and the varicella-zoster virus for the treatment of epithelial keratitis, viz, ophthalmic applications. In 2012, squalamine was been awarded Fast Track designation by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the potential treatment of the wet form of macular degeneration. These successful advances have had to overcome di?culties characteristic of marine natural products to become drugs, viz, sustainable sources, structural complexity, and toxicity, the same as the marine molecules in preclinical and clinical trials. In this chapter, the current advances and modern approaches of marine natural products and respective bioactive metabolites with potential and real functions as drugs leads are succinctly reviewed and particularly exemplified. An important aspect of this chapter is the analysis of marine natural products in relation to new paradigms and particularities of other disciplines, such as genomics, combinatorial chemistry, biosynthesis, and functional foods.