Some results and new trends in the development of studies on marine biologically active metabolites
This article represents a lecture at the International Conference "The future of modern medicine in the East-West medical perspective", which has been held at the Pacific State Medical University (Vladivostok) on October 3, 2016. Scientists from more than 40 countries are studying marine bioactive metabolites. Results of these investigations have been described in almost ten thousands scientific articles containing the information about 27 thousands low molecular weight natural compounds. Near a dozen effectively acting drugs, created on the basis of these metabolites, has been applied in different fields of medicine, including oncology, cardiology, and ophthalmology. Recent years new trends have appeared at the interface between natural products chemistry, cellular biology, microbiology, molecular genetics and fundamental medicine. Some results obtained in the framework of these trends are discussed in this article. Several examples of the studies on natural products, carried out at G.B. Elyakov Pacific Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry of the Far-Eastern Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, were shown in order to illustrate the achievements, connected with the search for, isolation, structure elucidation, and biological activity of marine natural products.