Secondary Metabolites from Antarctic Marine Invertebrates and their Potential as Drug Leads

The Antarctic region is of particular interest to natural products chemists because it remains relatively unexplored and possesses a wealth of unique biodiversity. Organisms that thrive in this region must produce different chemical defenses to survive in the harsh polar environment, making their secondary metabolites original and potentially useful as drugs for human disease. These compounds often have very complex structures, making their syntheses difficult and impractical. With this knowledge, five Antarctic marine invertebrates were extracted in search of their secondary metabolites. The chemical isolation studies were performed by macroorganism solvent extraction followed by chromatographic separation and purification of metabolites guided by proton nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy. The isolates were screened in malaria, leishmaniasis, and cytotoxicity bioassays. Based on the bioassay data, an extract of interest was chromatographed by high performance liquid chromatography and analyzed by liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry. Potential pure compounds could not be further isolated or characterized due to an insufficient quantity