Screening of Three Echinoderm Species as New Opportunity for Drug Discovery: Their Bioactivities and Antimicrobial Properties

Abstract

Echinoderms are a renewable resource with an economic value due to their increasing demand as food and/or source of bioactive molecules exerting antitumor, antiviral, anticoagulant, antioxidant, and antimicrobial activities. In this framework, the present study is aimed at investigating the antibacterial, antioxidant, and hemolytic activities in the three Echinoderm species Echinaster sepositus, Arbacia lixula, and Sphaerechinus granularis. The sea star E. sepositus showed lysozyme-like activity (mean diameter of lysis of 13.4 ± 0.2 mm), an antimicrobial activity against the human emerging pathogens Staphylococcus aureus, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and Candida famata, and a strong lytic activity (100 ± 0.05%) towards the human red blood cells. Furthermore A. lixula and E. sepositus had the highest antioxidant activity (1792.75 ± 233.7 and 1765.65 ± 484.58 nmolTE/mL, resp.). From toxicological assays, it was shown that E. sepositus was not toxic towards HeLa cells and Vibrio fischeri, encouraging the exploitation of this species in the pharmaceutical field. Therefore, our findings have implications due to the ongoing explosion of antibiotic-resistant infections because of the new opportunistic pathogens and the need to discover antibacterial agents with new modes of action. Also the recorded antioxidant activity taking into account the need to find natural antioxidants useful for human health is intriguing.

First Insight on the Mucus of the Annelid Myxicola infundibulum (Polychaeta, Sabellidae) as a Potential Prospect for Drug Discovery

“…Lysozyme-like activity was evaluated by using inoculated Petri dishes as standard assay [73]. Briefly, 700 mL of 5 mg/mL of dried M. luteus cell walls (Sigma) was diluted in 7 mL of 0.05 M PB-agarose (1.2%) (pH 5.2) and then spread on a Petri dish.…”

Chilean benthic species identified as a new source of antibiotic substances

“…In the phylum Echinodermata, the analyzed species showed the same antibiotic activity than other Echinodermata species reported in the literature such as Strongylocentrotus droebachiensis, Asterias rubens, Cucumaria frondosa and Diadema setosum (Haug et al, 2011;Marimuthu et al, 2015). These extracts could contain antimicrobial peptides or saponins because both are easily extracted with organic solvents (Andersson et al, 1989;Li et al, 2008) and are produced by coelomocytes cells or tissue specific cells as part of their immune response against pathogens (Haug et al, 2011;Li et al, 2015;Coates et al, 2018;Nalini et al, 2018;Stabili et al, 2018). The coelomic cells of Loxechinus albus are reported as a producer of antibiotic substances activity against Escherichia coli (Pizarro et al, 2012), and this study is adding more sources of antibiotic substances in the same species.…”

Chemical Composition, in-vitro Antioxidant, Antibacterial, and Anti-algal Activity of Lakshadweep Feather Star Spp. Comaster Schlegelii and Himerometra Robustipinna

“…3). The echinoderm species widespread in the Mediterranean area such as Echinaster sepositus, Sphaerechinus granularis, and Arbacia lixula are reported to be potential source of antioxidant compounds (Stabili et al 2018). Dakrory et al (2015) reported that extract of sea cucumber Holothuria atra displayed free radical scavenging properties and in-vivo antioxidant activity in animal models.…”