Pharmacy from the sea.
IPB guest scientist Hidayat Hussain, together with drug experts from all over the world, has published a comprehensive review article on marine organisms as a source of numerous bioactive compounds against breast cancer. The ocean world covers 70 percent of the Earth's surface and is considered the largest potential reservoir of bioactives, which are still scarcely explored. To date, more than 30,000 natural products with great structural diversity have been isolated from marine organisms. Some of these compounds, for example from tunicates, have already been approved as effective anticancer drugs, and numerous others are in development. Breast cancer is the most common and deadliest cancer in women. As many as 2.5 million cases are diagnosed annually worldwide. Treatment options are limited; new bioactive agents are urgently sought. In their review, the authors thoroughly detail individual marine organisms, listing the active compounds discovered so far from bacteria and algae, as well as those from sponges, tunicates, sea squirts and several other groups of organisms. The range of active ingredients described includes peptides, alkaloids, terpenoids, polyketides and numerous other therapeutically relevant compound classes. All of these discussed compounds have cytotoxic effects on malignant cells of various breast cancers.