Abstract
The biological diversity of marine habitats is a unique source of chemical compounds with potential use as pharmaceuticals, cosmetics and dietary supplements. However, biological screening and chemical analysis of marine extracts pose specific technical constraints and require adequate sample preparation. Here we report an improved method on Solid Phase Extraction (SPE) to fractionate organic extracts containing high concentration of salt that hampers the recovery of secondary metabolites. The procedure uses a water suspension to load the extracts on a poly(styrene-divynylbenzene)-based support and a stepwise organic solvent elution to effectively desalt and fractionate the organic components. The novel protocol has been tested on MeOH-soluble material from three model organisms (Reniera sarai, Dendrilla membranosa and Amphidinium carterae) and was validated on a small panel of 47 marine samples, including sponges and protists, within discovery programs for identification of immuno-stimulatory and anti-infective natural products.
Highlights
Marine natural products (MNPs) continue to be a source of inspiration in many areas of biomedical science
Extracts of marine samples have been traditionally partitioned with organic solvents of increasing polarity in order to enrich the amount of secondary metabolites recovered and reduce the masking effect of salt
PS-DVB resin is an attractive adsorbent for extraction of various types of organic compounds due to pH stability and the hydrophobic surfaces that highly retain non-polar molecules
Summary
Marine natural products (MNPs) continue to be a source of inspiration in many areas of biomedical science. Due to the physical and chemical properties of the marine environment, almost all classes of marine organisms exhibit a diversity of molecules with unique structural features [1]. It has been recently estimated that between 700,000 and one million species live in the world’s oceans [2], the species so far investigated represent only a small percentage of the total number of the marine existing organisms. The major effort in MNPs discovery is focused on compounds of pharmaceutical interest with an increasing number of molecules for drug development having been reported in recent years [3]. Continuous upgrade of analytical and molecular techniques is important in this process and is a prerequisite to target novel products by high-throughput approaches
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