Marine Sponge Natural Products with Anticancer Potential: An Updated Review

Abstract

Despite the huge investment into research and the significant effort and advances made in the search for new anticancer drugs in recent decades, cancer cure and treatment continue to be a formidable challenge. Many sources, including plants, animals, and minerals, have been explored in the oncological field because of the possibility of identifying novel molecular therapeutics. Marine sponges are a prolific source of secondary metabolites, a number of which showed intriguing tumor chemopreventive and chemotherapeutic properties. Recently, Food and Drug Administration-approved drugs derived from marine sponges have been shown to reduce metastatic breast cancer, malignant lymphoma, and Hodgkin’s disease. The chemopreventive and potential anticancer activity of marine sponge-derived compounds could be explained by multiple cellular and molecular mechanisms, including DNA protection, cell-cycle modulation, apoptosis, and anti-inflammatory activities as well as their ability to chemosensitize cancer cells to traditional antiblastic chemotherapy. The present article aims to depict the multiple mechanisms involved in the chemopreventive and therapeutic effects of marine sponges and critically explore the limitations and challenges associated with the development of marine sponge-based anticancer strategy.

Therapeutic Application of Diverse Marine-derived Natural Products in Cancer Therapy

“…Marine sponges belong to the phylum Porifera and are the richest source of natural marine compounds (84). Diverse molecules derived from marine sponges, such as nucleosides, sterols, alkaloids, and amino acid derivatives have been discovered and at least 60 of them have be shown to have potential chemopreventive and anticancer activities (85,86). These properties of marine sponge-derived natural products are affected by multiple cellular and molecular processes, such as cell cycle, apoptosis, and inflammation (Table IV).…”

Chemical Ecology of Marine Sponges: New Opportunities through “-Omics”

“…Several decades of intensive searching have uncovered over 10,000 sponge-derived organic natural products (http://pubs.rsc.org/marinlit/; accessed January 1, 2019). Most research on sponge natural products has emphasized their biomedical relevance, such as anticancer activity (Gerwick and Moore 2012;Calcabrini et al 2017). Sponge natural products encompass a range of structure types including alkaloids, terpenes (including sterols), polyketides, fatty acids, and peptides (Calcabrini et al 2017).…”

“…Most research on sponge natural products has emphasized their biomedical relevance, such as anticancer activity (Gerwick and Moore 2012;Calcabrini et al 2017). Sponge natural products encompass a range of structure types including alkaloids, terpenes (including sterols), polyketides, fatty acids, and peptides (Calcabrini et al 2017). Because of their rich diversity of natural products and the notable bioactivities demonstrated for these compounds, sponges are among the best-studied marine invertebrates for their natural products chemistry (Blunt et al 2018).…”

The chemical constituents and biological activity of some sponges in Northern Vietnam: A review

“…A number of potent active ingredients discovered from seaweeds were used as precursors to the development of currently used cancer treatment drugs like cytarabine (Ara-C), eribulin mesylate. [2] The number of compounds with new chemical structures is constantly detected from sponges. According to the statistics of Natural Product Report, in the recent decade (2001)(2002)(2003)(2004)(2005)(2006)(2007)(2008)(2009)(2010), there are about 300 novel compounds published from sponges and estimated in the current decade (2011-2020) on average each year and novel compounds from sponges have increased even more.…”