Eicosanoids and Related Compounds from Marine Algae

Abstract

One of the more surprising groups of natural products to find wide distribution in the marine environment are the eicosanoids and related fatty acids. In mammalian systems, this assemblage of diverse structures is of seminal importance to the maintenance of normal physiology. Furthermore, enhanced or aberrant production of metabolites in this structural class underlies a number of diseases related to inflammation. In the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s, occasional discoveries were made of metabolites generally describable as “eicosanoid-like” from diverse marine life. However, in the 1980s there has been an enormous increase in the number of eicosanoid-like metabolites discovered from these creatures, particularly in the red algae (Rhodophyta) and corals. Despite the widespread occurrence of eicosanoids among marine life forms and their central importance to mammalian physiology and biochemistry, very little is known about what role these compounds play in the ecology or physiology of the producing organisms. Further, in only a few cases have investigators sought to probe the biosynthetic origins of these fat-derived substances, a feature of their mammalian occurrence which has been of extreme interest to mechanistic chemists and central importance in medicinal considerations. Finally, to the extent that marine-derived eicosanoid-like substances have been evaluated for useful pharmacological properties, they are, as is expected, a potently active class.