The exploitation of marine organisms for human nutritional and pharmaceutical purposes has revealed important chemical prototypes for the discovery of new drugs, stimulating compounds isolation and syntheses of new related compounds with biomedical application. Nowadays, it is well known that inflammatory processes are involved in many diseases and the interest in the search for marine natural products with anti-inflammatory potential has been increasing. The genus Aplysia belongs to the class Gastropoda, having a wide geographical distribution and including several species, commonly known as sea hares. Aplysia depilans Gmelin is usually found in the Mediterranean Sea and in the Atlantic Ocean, from West Africa to the French coast. In these marine organisms, most of the digestion and nutrient absorption occurs in the digestive gland. This work aimed to explore the chemical composition and bioactivity of the methanol extract from A. depilans digestive gland. Therefore, fatty acids and carotenoids were determined by GC-MS and HPLC-DAD, respectively. Twenty-two fatty acids and eight carotenoids were identified for the first time in this species. The A. depilans digestive gland revealed to be essentially composed by polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA) and xanthophylls. Regarding the anti-inflammatory potential in RAW 264.7 cells stimulated with lipopolysaccharide, it was observed that this matrix has capacity to reduce nitric oxide (NO) and L-citrulline levels, which suggests that its compounds may act by interference with inducible nitric oxide synthase. Taking into account the results obtained, A. depilans digestive gland may be a good source of nutraceuticals, due to their richness in health beneficial nutrients, such as carotenoids and long-chain PUFA.
Keywords: Aplysia depilans digestive gland; anti-inflammatory potential; carotenoids; fatty acids.