title: Lessons from the past and charting the future of marine natural products drug discovery and chemical biology.
abstract: Marine life forms are an important source of structurally diverse and biologically active secondary metabolites, several of which have inspired the development of new classes of therapeutic agents. These success stories have had to overcome difficulties inherent to natural products-derived drugs, such as adequate sourcing of the agent and issues related to structural complexity. Nevertheless, several marine-derived agents are now approved, most as "first-in-class" drugs, with five of seven appearing in the past few years. Additionally, there is a rich pipeline of clinical and preclinical marine compounds to suggest their continued application in human medicine. Understanding of how these agents are biosynthetically assembled has accelerated in recent years, especially through interdisciplinary approaches, and innovative manipulations and re-engineering of some of these gene clusters are yielding novel agents of enhanced pharmaceutical properties compared with the natural product.
authors.affiliation: Scripps Institution of Oceanography and Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Science, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92037, USA. wgerwick@ucsd.edu
authors.forename: William H
authors.initials: WH
authors.lastname: Gerwick
authors.forename: Bradley S
authors.initials: BS
authors.lastname: Moore
mesh_terms: D000970:Antineoplastic Agents / Q000737:chemistry / Q000494:pharmacology; D000998:Antiviral Agents / Q000737:chemistry / Q000494:pharmacology; D059001:Aquatic Organisms / Q000737:chemistry*; D001688:Biological Products / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000494:pharmacology; D002986:Clinical Trials as Topic; D055808:Drug Discovery; D006801:Humans; D007004:Hypoglycemic Agents / Q000737:chemistry / Q000494:pharmacology
chemical_list: D000970:Antineoplastic Agents; D000998:Antiviral Agents; D001688:Biological Products; D007004:Hypoglycemic Agents