Cytotoxic Compounds of Two Demosponges (<i>Aplysina aerophoba</i> and <i>Spongia</i> sp.) from the Aegean Sea

oleh: Maria Orfanoudaki, Anja Hartmann, Mostafa Alilou, Naida Mehic, Marcel Kwiatkowski, Karin Jöhrer, Hieu Nguyen Ngoc, Andreas Hensel, Richard Greil, Markus Ganzera

Format: Article
Diterbitkan: MDPI AG 2021-05-01

Deskripsi

The class of demosponges is the biggest and most diverse of all described sponge species and it is reported to produce a plethora of chemically different metabolites with interesting biological activities. The focus of the present study was to investigate the chemical composition of two Mediterranean demosponges, targeting their brominated compounds and prenylated hydroquinones, compounds with interesting cytotoxic and anti-microbial properties. In order to gain a deeper insight into the chemical diversity of their metabolites and their activities, 20 pure secondary metabolites including new natural products were isolated from two different species (<i>Aplysina aerophoba</i> and <i>Spongia</i> sp.) using various chromatographic techniques. Their structures were confirmed by NMR and HRMS, revealing molecules with various chemical scaffolds, mainly prenylated hydroquinones from <i>Spongia</i> sp. and halogenated compounds from <i>Aplysina aerophoba,</i> including 5 novel natural products. The isolated compounds were investigated for their cytotoxic properties using 9 different cell lines, and especially one compound, 2,6-dibromo-4-hydroxy-4-methoxycarbonylmethylcyclohexa-2,5-dien-1-one showed good activities in all tested models.