Structure of Acetylenic Alcohols from the Marine Sponge

Abstract

The biological and chemical diversity of the marine environment is difficult to measure. Especially, the marine invertebrates are proving to be a productive source of structurally unique and biologically active natural products. Since the chemical investigation of marine organisms has begun, sponges have been regarded as one of the most important organisms. In the course of our search for the bioactive secondary metabolites from marine organisms, we collected the tropical sponge Reniochalina sp. from the coast of the Weno Island, Chuuk, Federated States of Micronesia. Studies on the chemical investigation of the Reniochalina sp. led to the isolation of a variety of long-chain acetylenic alcohols. The structures of the novel compounds have been elucidated by combined spectroscopic methods including 2D NMR. Acetylenic compounds are a rapidly growing class of sponge metabolites and exhibit great structural variations in both chain length and functional groups. Some of these compounds exhibited potent cytotoxic activity in vitro against the growth of human tumor cell lines such as ACHN, NCI-H23, MDA-MB-231, HCT-15, NUGC-3, and PC-3.