Mangrove plants grow in tropical and subtropical intertidal zones with acid, salt and oxygen deficit. The particularity of the growth environment provides a special host environment for mangrove fungi. The unique genetic background and metabolic pathway of mangrove-derived fungi make their secondary metabolites have novel structures and diverse biological activities. The genus of Penicillium is widely distributed, which is a large group of mangrove-derived fungi. It can produce metabolites with various structural types and novel structures such as alkaloids, peptides, terpenes, polyketones and other metabolites. Most of them have anti-tumor, anti-inflammatory, anti-bacterial, enzyme inhibitors and other bioactivities. The advances of the 276 natural products produced from mangrove-derived Penicillium in recent 14 years (from 2007 to 2020) are reviewed, in order to provide reference for the development of new natural drugs of mangrove Penicillium sp. fungi.

A pair of novel isochroman epimers eupenicilchromans A, B, and one new isocoumarin derivative eupenicilmarin A, together with five known compounds were isolated from the culture of mangrove-derived fungus Eupenicilium sp. HJ002. The structures of the new compounds, including the absolute configurations, were determined by comprehensive spectroscopic methods, experimental and calculated electronic circular dichroism (ECD) methods. Eupenicilchromans A, B showed potent antioxidant activeties with the IC50 values of 0.6 and 2.6 mmol/L, respectively, and eupenicilchroman A displayed better antioxidant activity than the positive control trolox (IC50＝1.6 mmol/L).