Bioactive natural products from Chinese marine flora and fauna.

In recent decades, the pharmaceutical application potential of marine natural products has attracted much interest from both natural product chemists and pharmacologists. Our group has long been engaged in the search for bioactive natural products from Chinese marine flora (such as mangroves and algae) and fauna (including sponges, soft corals, and mollusks), resulting in the isolation and characterization of numerous novel secondary metabolites spanning a wide range of structural classes and various biosynthetic origins. Of particular interest is the fact that many of these compounds show promising biological activities, including cytotoxic, antibacterial, and enzyme inhibitory effects. By describing representative studies, this review presents a comprehensive summary regarding the achievements and progress made by our group in the past decade. Several interesting examples are discussed in detail.