The Immune System of Marine Organisms as Source for Drugs against Infectious Diseases

Abstract

The high proliferation of microorganisms in aquatic environments has allowed their coevolution for billions of years with other living beings that also inhabit these niches. Among the different existing types of interaction, the eternal competition for supremacy between the susceptible species and their pathogens has selected, as part of the effector division of the immune system of the former ones, a vast and varied arsenal of efficient antimicrobial molecules, which is highly amplified by the broad biodiversity radiated, above any others, at the marine habitats. At present, the great recent scientific and technological advances already allow the massive discovery and exploitation of these defense compounds for therapeutic purposes against infectious diseases of our interest. Among them, antimicrobial peptides and antimicrobial metabolites stand out because of the wide dimensions of their structural diversities, mechanisms of action, and target pathogen ranges. This revision work contextualizes the research in this field and serves as a presentation and scope identification of the Special Issue from Marine Drugs journal “The Immune System of Marine Organisms as Source for Drugs against Infectious Diseases”.

Fish Skin Mucus Extracts: An Underexplored Source of Antimicrobial Agents

“…This is because, even in an unfavourable scenario of rapid generation of antimicrobial resistance, their availability would at least help to buy time for the development of other countermeasures, such as effective vaccines. In this regard, different antimicrobial search and development strategies with high expectations are being adopted [ 9 , 10 , 11 ]. However, this is not an easy task.…”

“…This should not discourage rational design efforts to expand the repertoire of synthetic antibiotics that, while still small (e.g., azoles, sulfones, ethambutol, nitrofurans, phenazines, quinolones, and thioamides), have already shown promise in terms of activity and safety [17,18]. However, there is no doubt that the search for natural antimicrobials in biological allies with far more combat experience against these enemies should continue, and that screening capabilities should be improved by exploiting existing and new technologies [11]. 1 This table is intended to give a general idea of the enormous differences in magnitude in terms of number, mass, and time since emergence of the various taxa relevant to this study, in order to understand the great challenge addressed in this study.…”

Marine Invertebrate Antimicrobial Peptides and Their Potential as Novel Peptide Antibiotics

“…It is noteworthy that marine organisms surpass terrestrial counterparts in terms of both biodiversity and biomass [5]. As a result, there is a prevailing belief that biologically active compounds found in marine organisms far exceed those derived from terrestrial organisms [6].…”