The biologically active, naturally occurring 1,2,3,4-tetrahydroisoquinoline-quinone (THIQ) family members isolated from Actinomycetes and marine organisms have been studied thoroughly over the past five decades. Among them, marine natural products along with their reduced compounds, such as renieramycins and ecteinascidins, have attracted interest due to their fantastic structures and meager availability in nature as well as their potent antitumor profiles. As part of our search for new anticancer metabolites through the isolation and characterization of anticancer THIQ compounds from Thai marine animals, we have developed a fascinating THIQ natural product chemistry and medicinal chemistry based on knowledge of the chemistry of saframycin antibiotics as well as their isolation, characterization, transformation, partial synthesis, and total synthesis. This review mainly presents our contributions during 1999-2019 to the field of research on biologically active renieramycin along with ecteinascidin marine natural products.
Keywords: antitumor activity; isoquinolinequinone; marine natural product; partial synthesis; structure determination; total synthesis.