Secondary metabolites from marine microorganisms and therapeutic efficacy: A mini review

Marine ecosystem, covering over 70% of the Earth's area, is the place for a wide variety of animal and plant species whose number greatly exceeds that of terrestrial ones. Amongst those biodiversity, microbial world represents a potential research object to be explored as the recent investigations on marine microbes have given the impact to the entire world as a source of bioactive metabolites producers. Since years, there are signals of decreased interest in the search of new metabolites from traditional sources such as macro-algae and octo-corals, and the number of annual reports on marine sponges stabilized. Moreover, bioactive compounds from marine flora and fauna have been used extensively since years in the treatment of many severe diseases and serve as compounds of interest both in their natural form and as templates for synthetic modification. Marine sources are efficient producers of new secondary metabolites that show a range of biological activities including antibacterial, antifungal, anticancer, antitumor, cytotoxic, cytostatic, anti-inflammatory, anti-parasitic, anti-malaria, antiviral, antioxidant and anti-angiogenesis, etc. The present review gives an overview of the current research trends, chemistry of secondary metabolites from marine isolates and their possible roles in various efficient biological activities.