Early exploration of the oceans was limited to its surfaces and the few creatures that fishermen brought up in nets, but when Louis Antoine de Bougainville and James Cook carried out their explorations in the South Pacific, the seas themselves formed part of the reports.
Marine natural products have attracted the attention of biologists and chemists the world over for the past five decades. As a result of the potential for new drug discovery, marine natural products have attracted scientists from different disciplines, such as organic chemistry, bioorganic chemistry, pharmacology, biology and ecology. This interest has led to the discovery of thousands of marine natural products to date and many of the compounds have shown very promising biological activity. The ocean is now considered to be a great source of potential drugs.
What are Marine Natural Products? Marine natural products are small- to medium- molecular weight compounds produced by marine plants, invertebrates and microbes that have stimulated interdisciplinary studies by chemists and biologists. From marine toxins that impact public health concerns to the search for new drugs from the sea, the study of biologically active marine natural products has profoundly influenced the course of discovery in fields ranging from pharmacology to cancer medicine
