Secondary Metabolites and Their Biological Activities from Marine-Derived Fungi from Tropical Waters

In the past years, there has been an increasing interest on marine-derived fungi as a target source of bioactive marine natural products because many consider them among the world’s greatest untapped resources for new biodiversity as well as chemodiversity. Additionally, through established culture methods, they are able to produce quantity of compounds needed for medicinal chemistry development, clinical trials and even marketing.

In our ongoing project on the search for bioactive compounds from marine-derived fungi from the tropical seas, we have focused mainly on marine-derived fungi of the genera Neosartorya, Talaromyces, Eurotium, Aspergillus, Penicillium, Acremonium and Sporidesmium, isolated from sponges, soft coral, sea-fan, macro-algae, and mangrove which were collected from the Gulf of Thailand and Andaman Sea. Several new secondary metabolites, including prenylated indole derivatives, quinazolinone and pyrazinoquinazolinone containing indole derivatives, polyketides, isocoumarins, anthraquinones, meroditerpenes and cyclic peptides have been isolated from these fungi.

The structures of the compounds were elucidated by extensive analysis of 1D and 2D NMR while the absolute configurations of their stereogenic carbons were established by X-ray analysis, comparison of the calculated and experimental ECD spectra as well as chiral HPLC. Some of the isolated compounds displayed interesting in vitro biological activities such as antibacterial, antibiofilm, anti-obesity, anticholinesterase, and cytotoxicity against a panel of human cancer cell lines.