Marine sponges are relatively less explored for their chemical features but highly anticipated resource for bioactive compounds. In this paper we report the screening of marine sponges crude extracts for their potential to bind the adenosine A1 receptor. Many samples showed very promising activity and in order to identify the active components, a metabolomics-chemometrics approach is employed. Nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy is used for the metabolic profiling of the marine sponges and partial least squares (PLS) and orthogonal PLS (OPLS) algorithms are used to correlate the metabolomics with bioactivity data. Using several two dimensional-NMR techniques, the resonances responsible for the separation of high activity samples from the medium and low activity samples were identified as associated to metabolites like halisulfate 1, halisulfate 3-5, and suvanine (1-5), all belongs to sesterterpenes class. The reference compounds for these metabolites are also tested for the activity, which endorse the findings of the applied methodology.

Eight scalarane sesterterpenoids, including four new compounds, were isolated from the marine sponge Scalarispongia sp. The structures of the new compounds were elucidated by 2D-NMR and HRMS analyses. All of the isolated compounds, with the exception of 16-O-deacetyl-12,16-epi-scalarolbutanolide, showed significant in vitro cytotoxicity (GI50 values down to 5.2 μM) against six human cancer cell lines.

Nine suvanine analogs including suvanine phenethylammonium salt and two new compounds were isolated from the marine sponge Coscinoderma sp., collected from Chuuk State, Federated States of Micronesia. The structures of the new compounds were elucidated by 2D NMR and HRMS analyses. Suvanine and a new analog exhibited weak but selective cytotoxicity against colon (HCT-15), lung (NCI-H23), stomach (NUGC-3), and prostate (PC-3) cancer cell lines.