There is so mushroom for development in the field of Marine Fungi as a source of Anticancer compounds.

 The marine environment is crucial in the production of drugs, with over half of the FDA approved drugs between 1981 and 2002 coming from our oceans. However, there are still areas of the marine environment that are relatively unexplored, Fungi being one of them. Terrestrial Fungi are better studied and have provided numerous key findings and drug developments in recent years. These discoveries further indicate the importance and the need to explore the world of marine Fungi in more depth.

The production of complex metabolites by Fungi is known but poorly understood, however it is thought that these compounds play a key role in chemical defence and communication. In this review they asses the discovery of over 1,000 metabolites derived from Fungi that may have potential to be developed into anticancer drugs. The authors reviewed papers from between 2012-2016 that looked at the metabolites produced by Fungi from numerous environments and summarised their findings from these papers.

Due to the nature of the paper I will touch briefly on some of the findings however will not be able to go into detail. The environments they looked at were:

·         Deep sea Fungi- These were found below 1000m and faced the extreme conditions associated with the deep sea. There were numerous metabolites found in the deep sea with anticancer properties. One example was isolated linear peptides from the fungus Simplicillium obclaruatum showed toxicity towards Human Leukaemia cells as well as other cancers. (Liang et al., 2015)

·         Algae associated Fungi- Endophytic fungus Paecilomyce variott had 2 derivative compounds and they found that both compounds were cytotoxic against HEP G2 which is Human Liver cancer, as well as other cancers. (Zhang et al., 2016)

·         Mangrove Endophytic Fungi- This section had numerous studies, one that stood out used a one strain many compounds approach and found Penicilium brocae produced Spirobrocazines and Brocazines.Spirobrocazine showed higher toxicity to A2780 cells which are human Ovarian cancer than the control which is a drug currently in use. (Meng et al., 2016)

·         Marine sediment derived Fungi-  Compounds derived from Peniciilium paneum were cytotoxic against Hela Cells which are known as “Immortal” cells and are cancerous. In fact  these compounds too worked better than the control drug Fluorouracil which is currently sold on the market.(Li et al., 2013)

·         Sponge associated Fungi-  Coral derived Fungi Neosartorya laciniosa produced new compounds  all of which were tested for their ability to inhibit the growth of numerous diseases such as MCF 7 which causes Breast cancer. All compounds derived showed some level of inhibition. (Eamvijarn et al., 2013)

·         Compounds from other marine derived Fungi-  These included seawater, leaf detritus, sea mud, sea cucumbers and more and all studies showed toxicity towards cancerous cells.

In this review 199 compounds isolated from marine Fungi have shown potential to be developed as anticancer agents, with some compounds discovered being more effective than the controls that are the current drugs in circulation .This review is across only 4 years of study which I feel just highlights how much there is to be discovered. However unfortunately the results from these studies have not been fully investigated.The suggested reasons for this include a lack of centres for culture and collection and a lack of specialized centres that work with biologically derived drugs .These  factors make advancements and  further study in this area  challenging.  But if explored further the authors suggest it could cause a real shift in the direction of drug discovery.

Paper reviewed

Deshmukh, S., Prakash, V., & Ranjan, N. (2018). Marine Fungi: A Source of Potential Anticancer Compounds. Frontiers In Microbiology, 8. http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fmicb.2017.02536

Other Papers referenced

Eamvijarn, A., Gomes, N., Dethoup, T., Buaruang, J., Manoch, L., & Silva, A. et al. (2013). Bioactive meroditerpenes and indole alkaloids from the soil fungus Neosartorya fischeri (KUFC 6344), and the marine-derived fungi Neosartorya laciniosa (KUFC 7896) and Neosartorya tsunodae (KUFC 9213). Tetrahedron, 69(40), 8583-8591. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tet.2013.07.078

Li, C., Li, X., Gao, S., Lu, Y., & Wang, B. (2013). Cytotoxic Anthranilic Acid Derivatives from Deep Sea Sediment-Derived Fungus Penicillium paneum SD-44. Marine Drugs, 11(8), 3068-3076. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/md11083068

Liang, X., Zhang, X., Nong, X., Wang, J., Huang, Z., & Qi, S. (2016). Eight linear peptides from the deep-sea-derived fungus Simplicillium obclavatum EIODSF 020. Tetrahedron, 72(22), 3092-3097. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tet.2016.04.032

Meng, L., Wang, C., Mándi, A., Li, X., Hu, X., & Kassack, M. et al. (2016). Three Diketopiperazine Alkaloids with Spirocyclic Skeletons and One Bisthiodiketopiperazine Derivative from the Mangrove-Derived Endophytic Fungus Penicillium brocae MA-231. Organic Letters, 18(20), 5304-5307. http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/acs.orglett.6b02620

Zhang, P., Li, X., Mao, X., Mándi, A., Kurtán, T., & Wang, B. (2016). Varioloid A, a new indolyl-6,10b-dihydro-5aH-[1]benzofuro[2,3-b]indole derivative from the marine alga-derived endophytic fungusPaecilomyces variotiiEN-291. Beilstein Journal Of Organic Chemistry, 12, 2012-2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.3762/bjoc.12.188