Chemical Investigation of Bioactive Marine Extracts

Natural products have been a fundamental source of medicinal scaffolds for decades; with sixty percent of marketed drugs. Many synthetic chemists are focused on synthesizing potent and nontoxic compounds for pharmaceutical targets, however, nature is still proving to be a source of new bioactive compounds. Produced by the host organism for defense, reproduction and communication, secondary metabolites also demonstrate promising bioactivity against human pathogens. Hence, natural product chemists continue their quest for new leads. As a continuation of these efforts, this thesis attempts to explore fungi and sponges for new chemistry, and ultimately, new drug candidates. Antarctica is largely untapped; hence herein two Antarctic sponges were chemically investigated. This resulted in isolation and characterization of two metabolites. Concurrently, chemical investigation of fungus, from Floridian mangrove species, resulted in the isolation of two structurally diverse metabolites. Further, a dereplication process was applied to MPLC fractions, which lead to the identification of known metabolites and mycotoxins. This enabled prioritization of fractions for future studies