Structure-activity Relationship Studies of New Marine Anticancer Agents and their Synthetic Analogues

Abstract

This review addresses in-depth recent structure-activity relationship (SAR) studies published in 2015 on new marine compounds and their synthetic analogues with potential or established anticancer activity. Priority was given to papers on in vitro screening methods of marine-derived bioactive compounds, usually performed using panels of human cancer cell lines, as a first step of the anticancer drugs discovery process. Our review describes compounds belonging to different classes of substances, namely terpenoids, glycosides, alkaloids, steroids, as well as other small molecular compounds. We believe that our review will not only help chemists in the design and synthesis of novel anticancer compounds possessing specific cytotoxic or cytostatic activity in human cancer cells, but will also extend the existing databases comprising data on bioactivity of marine natural compounds.

Keywords: Marine natural compounds; alkaloids; anticancer activity; glycosides; steroids; structure-activity relationship (SAR) study; terpenoids.