Special Issue "Marine-Derived Biomolecules II: In Memory of Prof. Paul Scheuer (1915-2003)"

Dear Colleagues,

The world’s oceans have been shown to provide a rich place with great biodiversity and chemical entities with proven bioactivities related to cancer, inflammation, epilepsy, the immunomodulatory system, microbial and parasitic infections, and many others. Currently, there are eight approved drugs of marine origin and more than 20 other compounds in different clinical phases. Marine invertebrates and micro-organisms represent the major sources of these compounds.

The advantages of studying organisms from the marine environment lie primarily in the breadth of marine biodiversity and the consequent variety of new chemical structures found among marine natural products. Attesting to the tremendous diversity of marine life is the fact that of the 33 animal phyla, 32 are found in the sea, while only 12 occur on land. The larger genetic pool found in the marine environment has resulted in the synthesis of a wide variety of chemicals that can be exploited in a systematic screening program. Many of the primitive phyla that have evolved over the greatest time in the sea appear to have done so using survival mechanisms based on chemical synthesis. The compounds that are responsible for the successful survival of marine organisms possess significant biological activities that often interfere with the essential growth or biosynthetic mechanisms of competing organisms. These are precisely the types of chemicals that might be expected to be active in cancer-related bioassays. Over many millions of years of evolution, marine animals have evolved molecules with high binding affinities toward intracellular targets. The opportunity to apply these “evolutionarily significant molecules” within a mechanism-based drug discovery program is thus a rational approach to targeted drug discovery.

This Special Issue on “Marine-Derived Biomolecules” in Biomolecules will cover all scopes of bioassay-directed fractionation of extracts, purification, and structure mapping of marine-derived molecules as well as their biological activities. Biomolecules from marine macro-organisms and/or microbes, new assays’ development, metabolomics, docking and dereplication of compounds will be targeted in this issue.

As Special Issue Editors, we invite all colleagues who are actively involved in research related to marine biomolecules to share their latest findings and results with other colleagues working in the same field. I hope that this Special Issue will provide deep insights into the importance of marine-derived biomolecules as a future source for drug discovery. I also hope that this issue will inspire junior scientists to look at the huge biodiversity of the marine environment and its future impact as leading sources for drug discovery and development.

Prof. Dr. Diaa Youssef
Prof. Dr. Lamiaa Shaala
Guest Editors

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• marine invertebrates and associated microbes
• seaweed
• microalgae
• cyanobacteria
• blue biotechnology
• algae
• structure determinations
• bioactive compounds
• dereplication
• metabolomics
• docking
• mode of action of compounds
• marine nutraceuticals and nutrients

• Marine-Derived Biomolecules in Biomolecules (8 articles)