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Editorial: The multiple applications of marine-derived bioactives

Year: 2025

Type: editorial

Abstract: Marine biodiscovery is one of the main pillars of marine biotechnology and dedicated to unearthing of biologically active small molecules (Reddy et al., 2021). A rich catalogue of natural products from mainly from marine invertebrates and algae has already contributed fundamentally to modern medicine, especially for the treatment of solid human cancers (Sigwart et al., 2021). Due to the main supply issue of bioactive metabolites in sufficient quantities for drug development, microorganisms living symbiotically with marine macroorganisms, sediment or seawater emerge as sustainable and upscalable sources of marine bioactives (Rotter et al., 2021). However, the identification of the biodiscovery source is only the first step of the process. It normally proceeds with the appropriate extraction, biological profiling using diverse in vitro bioassays, chemical profiling/dereplication by untargeted metabolomics followed by isolation and characterization of the active compounds (Sabotič et al., 2024), and scaling up and production. Identification of the mechanism of pharmacological activity is also crucial for development of a marine natural product for medical applications. Hence, marine biodiscovery pipeline is inherently transdisciplinary and demands a long development cycle (up to 20 years or more), especially when developing new pharmaceuticals. This Research Topic aims to provide an overview the recent advances on marine biotechnology, 38 addressing specific applications for the pharmaceutical and wellbeing industries. a limited 39 number of manuscripts were accepted, they provide an interesting outlook on the current state of 40 research in this field. 41 Target Natural Products and Their Applications. To date, less than 20 marine-derived natural 56 products that have been approved as medicines by health authorities worldwide-such as the FDA in 57 the United States, and equivalent agencies in the European Union, Australia-for the treatment of 58 conditions including cancer, pain, and hypertriglyceridemia. However, many more marine-derived 59 compounds are currently undergoing various stages of clinical and preclinical trials. Despite the 60 relatively small number of approved drugs, the range of biological activities and potential applications 61 of marine-derived organisms and their biomolecules is vastly broader. This is reflected in the diversity 62 of target applications reported within this research topic, including anti-obesity treatment (Rao et al.,63 2024), insomnia treatment using peptides (Wang et al., 2024), antimicrobial and anticancer activities 64 of prodigiosin (Girão et al., 2024), and cosmetic and nutritional applications of collagen (Santos Filipe 65 et al., 2024). 66 Pipeline of discovery. To gather further insights in the exploration and application of marine-derived 67 bioactives, several steps are needed: isolation (when microorganisms are the target producers), and 68 omics analyses, bioactivity screening, compound isolation, characterization, structure elucidation, 69 animal experiments (using e.g., zebrafish or mice). Indeed, these steps were followed within the articles 70 of this research topic. 71 Future outlook. In summary, the marine biosynthetic potential for drug discovery still requires 72 significant progress-particularly in structure prediction from gene sequences, biological activity 73 forecasting from molecular structures, and the development of sustainable 'green chemistry' extraction 74 methods (Almaliti and Gerwick, 2023). Looking ahead, scaling up production, addressing regulatory 75 and standardization challenges, and integrating all pillars of sustainability-environmental, economic, 76 and social-are essential. Some of these aspects must be considered even before research can be 77 translated into clinical trials and real-world applications. 78 79

Source: Frontiers in Pharmacology

DOI: 10.3389/fphar.2025.1733987

Authors: Patricia Rijo, Deniz Tasdemir, Ana Rotter