Indole alkaloids represent a large subset of natural products, with more than 4100 known compounds. The majority of these alkaloids are biologically active, with some exhibiting excellent antitumor, antibacterial, antiviral, antifungal, and antiplasmodial activities. Consequently, the natural products of this class have attracted considerable attention as potential leads for novel therapeutics and are routinely isolated, characterized, and profiled to gauge their biological potential. However, data on indole alkaloids, their various structures, and bioactivities are complex due to their diverse sources, such as plants, fungi, bacteria, sponges, tunicates, and bryozoans; thus, isolation methods produce an incredible trove of information. The situation is exacerbated when synthetic derivatives, as well as their structures, bioactivities, and synthetic schemes, are considered. Thus, to make such data comprehensive and inform researchers about the current field's state, this review summarizes recent reports on novel indole alkaloids. It deals with the isolation and characterization of 250 novel indole alkaloids, a reappraisal of previously reported compounds, and total syntheses of indole alkaloids. In addition, several syntheses and semi-syntheses of indole-containing derivatives and their bioactivities are reported between January 2019 and July 2022.
Keywords: anticancer; antimicrobial; antiviral; cytotoxic; indole; natural products; other bioactivities.