Abstract
Due to taxonomic positions and special living environments, marine organisms produce secondary metabolites that possess unique structures and biological activities. This review is devoted to recently isolated and/or earlier described marine compounds with potential or established cancer preventive activities, their biological sources, molecular mechanisms of their action, and their associations with human health and nutrition. The review covers literature published in 2003–2013 years and focuses on findings of the last 2 years.
Highlights
The outstanding biological/biochemical diversity of marine environment serves as a source of inspiration and attracts great interest of chemists and pharmacologists
polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) was associated with lower levels of prostaglandin E2, which may suggest that the alteration of eicosanoid production is an important mechanism that underlies the chemopreventive effects of the marine- derived ω-3 PUFAs [37]
Inhibition of oxidative stress induced by TPA in human cervix adenocarcinoma HeLa cells led to a 50% decrease in H2O2 levels when sarcophytol A (Sarc A) was used at a concentration of 75 μM [89]
Summary
The outstanding biological/biochemical diversity of marine environment serves as a source of inspiration and attracts great interest of chemists and pharmacologists. Recent research has included previously known physiologically active marine natural products, which themselves or their synthetic derivatives are applicable in cancer therapy or cancer prevention [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8] The latter involves the employment of natural or synthetic compounds for prevention, suppression or reversion of the process of carcinogenesis [9]. We review the studies, mainly published in recent years, on several groups of the marine naturally occurring compounds, which are potentially useful for cancer prevention as can be judged from in vitro and/or in vivo results These compounds are noncytotoxic, or at least show their anticancer properties at nontoxic concentrations. Our review highlights biological sources, structures and mechanisms of action of the marine lipids, carotenoids, glycosides, terpenoids, alkaloids, and other marine natural products that are currently undergoing evaluation as cancer preventive agents either in laboratories or in clinical trials
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