Abstract
Despite huge efforts by academia and pharmaceutical industry, cancer remains the second cause of disease-related death in developed countries. Novel sources and principles of anticancer drug discovery are in urgent demand. Marine-derived natural products represent a largely untapped source of future drug candidates. This review focuses on the anticancer drug discovery potential of marine invertebrates from the North-West Pacific. The issues of biodiversity, chemodiversity, and the anticancer pharmacophore diversity this region hides are consecutively discussed. These three levels of diversity are analyzed from the point of view of the already discovered compounds, as well as from the assessment of the overall, still undiscovered and enormous potential. We further go into the predictions of the economic and societal benefits the full-scale exploration of this potential offers, and suggest strategic measures to be taken on the national level in order to unleash such full-scale exploration. The transversal and multi-discipline approach we attempt to build for the case of marine invertebrate-based anticancer drug discovery from a given region can be applied to other regions and disease conditions, as well as up-scaled to global dimensions.
Highlights
Possessing an unprecedented molecular diversity, natural products have been the source of numerous medicinal drugs and health benefit products throughout human history, from traditional medicines to modern molecular drug discovery approaches [1]
The current review focuses on invertebrate marine natural products with an anticancer potential
The triterpene glycoside frondoside A was first isolated from the edible sea cucumber Cucumaria frondosa japonica, which is common to North Atlantic and North Pacific [59], and was subsequently isolated from its relative from the Sea of Okhotsk, Cucumaria okhotensis [46]
Summary
Possessing an unprecedented molecular diversity, natural products have been the source of numerous medicinal drugs and health benefit products throughout human history, from traditional medicines to modern molecular drug discovery approaches [1]. The biggest share of those new drugs will target various forms of cancer, as do the pioneers in the marine natural product-based drug discovery, the anticancer medicines Erubilin mesylate, Trabectedin, or Brentuximab vedotin [6]. The fourth will attempt to evaluate the commercial and societal value, in terms of the drugs to be developed and the health conditions to treat, of the full-scale exploration of the said anticancer chemodiversity of the ‘treasure chest’ hidden in the North-West Pacific. To our knowledge, such an investigation combining biological, chemical, and economic assessments has not previously been performed to study the drug discovery potential of marine natural products. We hope that this analysis may be beneficial for the governmental strategic planning
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