Bioactive compounds against neglected diseases isolated from macroalgae: a review

Abstract

To survive in a very competitive environment, marine macroalgae had to evolve defense strategies, resulting in an enormous diversity of compounds from different metabolic pathways. These secondary metabolites have been explored by the pharmaceutical industries in order to generate new drugs to treat several diseases. Recent publications in drug research from natural sources have indicated algae as an interesting choice to provide novel drugs to fulfill this gap. This review highlights algal metabolites that showed bioactivities suggesting their potential against neglected diseases. Drug discovery for neglected diseases has been overlooked by the Big Pharmas, mainly because they affect poor people, most of them living in developing countries. Moreover, this review shows the commercial application of the most explored chemicals from algae such as terpenes, phenols, quinones, macrolides, alkaloids, lipids, chromones, and other related metabolites and an overview regarding the status of green extraction technologies for seaweeds and their concepts.