海洋生物を起源とする制癌剤の探索

Abstract

Marine organisms comprise over half a million species. Due to their unusual living circumstances as compared with terrestrial organisms, marine organisms produce a variety of metabolites which often possess various unprecedented chemical structures. In recent years, an increasing number of marine natural products have been reported to exhibit various biological activities : e.g. growth inhibitions against pathogenic microorganisms, physiological functions (pheromone, allelochemic, synomone), pharmacological actions, cytotoxicities and anti-tumor activities, and toxicities.Following the trend of the times, many efforts have been made to discover new anti-cancer agents from marine sources, and various novel compounds (e.g. peptide, polyether, alkaloid, prostanoid, etc.), with anti-tumor activities, have been isolated from marine sponges, octocorals, marine algae, tunicates, nudibranchs, bryozoans, and others. In this article, those chemically clarified anti-tumor compounds isolated from marine organisms are reviewed.