Laurence Jennings, postdoctoral researcher at NUIG/Marine Institute, presented a Poster at MaNaPro & ECMNP 2019. The focus of the poster was the isolation of two new bisindole alkaloids from Spongosorites calcicola collected in the Celtic seas. These compounds give new insights into the biosynthetic pathway of similar marine bisindole alkaloids. These represent an important family of marine natural products with pharmaceutical potential. See abstract below.
Bisindole Alkaloids Isolated from the Irish Coastal Sponge Spongosorites calcicola as part of the National Marine Biodiscovery Project.
Laurence K. Jennings, Navdeep Kaur, Daniel Rodrigues, Eric Gilson, Jeffrey Fisher, Olivier P. Thomas
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Over the last 60 years, marine natural products have been reported with a unique chemical diversity not observed in terrestrial natural products. However, there still remains significant areas of largely unexplored diverse marine habitats. The Beaufort Marine Biodiscovery project established the basis for marine biodiscovery in Ireland. Currently, the national marine biodiscovery laboratory in Ireland project (NMBLI) is continuing this marine natural products discovery campaign, with a primary goal to examine Irish coastal invertebrates to identify bioactive marine natural products.
Following initial chemical and biological screening of Irish marine invertebrates, fractions of the sponge Spongosorites calcicola were found to exhibit strong anti-tumor activities and a large number of brominated metabolites. Herein, we describe the isolation, structure elucidation and novel biological evaluation of one new bisindole alkaloid, Calcicamide (1), from S. calcicola. Calcicamide is biosynthetically related to a number of other common marine natural products including the topsentins, spongotines and hamacanthins. We also display TRF-2 modulating anti-cancer screening results from Calcicamide as well as five other known bisindole analogues.
