Abstract
Marine organisms represent a highly diverse reserve of bioactives which could aid in the treatment of a wide range of diseases, including various musculoskeletal conditions. Osteoporosis in particular would benefit from a novel and effective marine-based treatment, due to its large disease burden and the inefficiencies of current treatment options. Osteogenic bioactives have been isolated from many marine organisms, including nacre powder derived from molluscan shells and fucoidan—the sulphated polysaccharide commonly sourced from brown macroalgae. Such extracts and compounds are known to have a range of osteogenic effects, including stimulation of osteoblast activity and mineralisation, as well as suppression of osteoclast resorption. This review describes currently known soluble osteogenic extracts and compounds from marine invertebrates and algae, and assesses their preclinical potential.
Highlights
An osteoporosis-related fracture occurs once every 3 seconds [1], whilst in Europe the disease burden exceeds that of common neoplastic disorders, excluding lung cancer [1]
Fucoidan extracted from the sea cucumber Apostichopus japonicus has been shown to inhibit osteoclastogenesis [43], whilst work by Kim et al (2014) demonstrated the same effect with brown algal extracts added to bone marrow macrophage cultures
The results indicated that BMP2-Smad 1/5/8 signalling was responsible for stimulating osteoblast differentiation through activation of extracellular signal-regulated kinase (ERK) and JNK pathways
Summary
An osteoporosis-related fracture occurs once every 3 seconds [1], whilst in Europe the disease burden exceeds that of common neoplastic disorders, excluding lung cancer [1]. Marine organisms are a potential source of scaffold material and novel osteogenic (promoting new osteoblast bone formation) bioactives. The aim of this review is to summarise the current marine organism-derived bioactives with osteogenic potential. It will include discussion of invertebrate and alga-derived material (which show particular promise), but will exclude bioactives from marine vertebrates such as fish (see Table 1 and Figure 1 for summary of extracts included). Challenges to undertaking this work and sourcing marine bioactives will be discussed, as will future recommendations for the field This demonstrates the range of taxa investigated within this field, which are referred to in the text.
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