Isolation and characterization of bioactive compounds from the marine hydrozoans Halecium muricatum and Halecium beanii

Abstract

In the marine environment there is a great potential for discovering new commercial drugs, and marine bioprospecting has previously led to the discovery of drugs available for clinical use, like Yondelis ® and cytosine arabinoside. In this work two hydroids were tested for anticancer and antibacterial activity. The organic extracts from the two hydroids, Halecium muricatum and Halecium beanii, showed activity in the 1st and 2nd screening against the human melanoma cell line and Streptococcus group B. This resulted in dereplication and isolation of eight possible bioactive compounds. After the isolation, the two purest compounds were analyzed using TOF- MS, 1H- NMR, 13C- NMR, HMBC combined with HSQC NMR and MS- MS for structure elucidation. From the structure elucidation it was obvious that the two compounds were phosphocholines, however the exact structures were not confirmed. These two compounds were tested against human melanoma, normal lung fibroblasts, breast cancer and prostate cancer for confirmation of bioactivity.