Are multifunctional marine polysaccharides a myth or reality?

(2015) Are multifunctional marine polysaccharides a myth or reality? Front. Chem. 3:39. Marine algae are ancient photosynthetic organisms that constitute the largest group in the plant kingdom. They are used for functional food, cosmetic additives, supplements productions, and in traditional medicine due to taste, prophylactic, and therapeutic effects. Algae contain microelements and iodine-containing organic compounds, as well as vitamins, mannitol more than terrestrial plants. Polysaccharides of algae are especially valuable substances. Some of them (for example agarose, carrageenans, and alginates) have found widespread application. Information about them was published a long time ago and described in detail in books. At the moment polysaccharides synthesized by brown algae (laminarans and especially fucoidans) are of greatest interest. A laminarans were found in both marine and terrestrial organisms. It should be noticed that fucoidans are truly marine polysaccharides. The general term " fucoidan " is used to integrate the molecules, differenced in composition, structure, and in degree of sulfation, acetylation, etc. (Berteau and Mulloy, 2003; Kusaykin et al., 2008). Content of fucoidans depends on the species and on the stage of development of algae and may vary from 0.1 to 20% of dry weight of algae (Mabeau et al., 1990; Zvyagintseva et al., 2003). Huge amount of reserves of fucoidans accumulate in brown algae, which grow in the seas at temperate and northern latitudes (Ermakova et al., 2011; Sokolova et al., 2011; Men'shova et al., 2012; Thinh et al., 2013). Analogs of these polysaccharides have not been found on the land till now. Fucoidans long since are attracted attention due to diverse biological activity, low toxicity, and plant origin (Berteau and Mulloy, 2003; Kusaykin et al., 2008). Last is important because of contamination and side effects of the preparation produced from animals (for example, heparin). A large number of publications are devoted to the study of antitumor, anticoagulant, antimutagenic activities, and immunostimulatory, antiinfective and antioxidant properties of these polysaccharides. However, despite the obvious prospects for exploitation in medicine, none of fucoidan is declared yet as a drug. The reason is that the structural diversity of fucoidans is extremely large. Structural investigation of fucoidans is of great difficulties because of varieties of monosaccharide compositions, different types of glycosidic linkages, presence of large numbers of non-carbohydrate substituents. There are only a small number of fucoidans with established basic elements of the chemical structure (Chizhov et al. Unfortunately in the study of biological properties and enzymatic …