Special Issue "Marine Natural Products - Advances in Separation, Characterisation and Chemical Profiling Methodologies"

Guest Editor
Dr. Sylvia Urban
School of Applied Sciences (Applied Chemistry), RMIT University (City Campus), GPO Box 2476V, Melbourne 3001, Victoria, Australia
Website: http://www.rmit.edu.au/browse;ID=a3to28z2wchp1;STATUS=A?QRY=sylvia%20urban&STYPE=ENTIRE
E-Mail:
Interests: marine and terrestrial natural products chemistry; isolation and structural characterisation; NMR spectroscopy; analytical separation methodologies

Submission

All manuscripts should be submitted to marinedrugs@mdpi.org with a copy to the Guest Editor. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. Papers will be published continuously (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are refereed through a peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Marine Drugs is an international peer-reviewed Open Access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this Open Access journal is 1400 CHF per accepted paper.

Title: The Problem of Toxic Equivalence Factors in Analytical Chromatographic Profiles of Marine Toxins
Author: Luis M. Botana
Affiliation: Departamento de Farmacología, Facultad de Veterinaria Universidad de Santiago de Compostela, Campus de Lugo 27002 Lugo, Spain
Abstract: Marine toxins are monitored by means of a mouse bioassay, with two exceptions, namely HPLC methods for Domoic acid and for PSP toxins. The replacement of the bioassay for alternative methods poses two problems, the refinement of validated methods, and the need of understanding the toxicity of each of the components of a toxin group. Although functional assays do not need information about toxicity of the groups components, analytical assays do require this information. As a consequence, the development of alternative confirmatory methods require information of how each reference toxin analog is treated. This review will discuss the current state of the art.

Title: Marine Natural Products Libraries: Fast-Forwarding the Discovery of Potent Marine Drug Candidates
Authors: Florence Folmer ¹, Marcel Jaspars ¹, Mario Dicato ² and Marc Diederich ²
Affiliations: ¹ Department of Chemistry, University of Aberdeen, Old Aberdeen, AB24 3UE, UK
² Laboratoire de Biologie Moléculaire et Cellulaire du Cancer, Hôpital Kirchberg, 9, rue Edward Steichen, L-2540 Luxembourg, Luxembourg
Abstract: Since its early development in the 1960’s, marine drug discovery has made tremendous progresses, and several marine natural products are now in late stages of clinical trials or have reached the pharmaceutical market. The scope of therapeutical properties natural products can be tested for has also evolved at a very rapid pace, leaving marine natural products scientists with a multitude of research avenues to embark onto. One of the major problems hampering marine drug discovery, however, is the limited amount of biomass available for chemical characterization and for biological testing. Recently, various laboratories have developed the concept of “fractionated marine extract libraries” to encounter this problem. The design of such libraries applies top of the art chromatography and spectroscopy technologies which allow the chemical characterization of minute amounts of organic material, and hence the rapid generation of chemical libraries available for high throughput screening against a large panel of diseases. Here, we discuss the fractionation strategies of the various marine natural products libraries established to date, as well as their particular applications in drug discovery.

Title: Marine Source Microorganisms of the Family Micromonosporaceae and Their Natural Products Potential
Author: Luis A. Maldonado
Affiliation: Instituto de Ciencias del Mar y Limnología, UNAM
Abstract: Members of the family Micromonosporaceae have been readily recognised for their innate ability as non-Streptomyces secondary metabolites producers. Recent studies on marine actinomycetes have produced an interesting twist into Micromonospora-related organisms that can become putative sources for novel and yet-unknown metabolites with biological activity. At present time, the genera Micromonospora, Salinispora and Verrucosispora have proven to be unexpected sources of secondary metabolites with no terrestrial counterparts. The present review deals with the unexplored field of marine source Micromonospora, Salinispora and Verrucosispora, their secondary metabolites which can range from anticancerigen drugs to biochemical pathway inhibitors and strategies for characterization and identification.