College of Biomedicine and Health, Victoria University, St Albans, Vic, Australia.
J Pharm Pharmacol. 2013 Sep;65(9):1280-301. doi: 10.1111/jphp.12097. Epub 2013 Jul 10.
Cancer affects the health of many people globally. The most common treatment that is used for cancer is chemotherapy, which has shown promising results but not without side effects. Some of these side effects jeopardise further treatment, and this eventually leads to advanced stages of malignancy and mortality. As a result, there is a need for better and safer anticancer compounds such as those found naturally. One of the most abundant natural environments to find such compounds is the sea, and this vast resource has been biomined since the 1950s.
There are currently three marine anticancer agents marketed (Yondelis, Cytosar-U and Halaven), with several others undergoing clinical trials. This review discusses marine-derived products in clinical use and in clinical trials, and discusses available literature on the growth suppression or pro-apoptotic properties of these compounds, and the molecular mechanisms underpinning these cell biological phenomena.
The marine environment may hold promising anticancer compounds within its depths, warranting further research to be performed in this area, albeit with respect for the natural ecosystems that are being explored for drug discover and subsequently used for drug development.
癌症影响着全球许多人的健康。目前最常用于癌症治疗的方法是化疗，它已显示出良好的效果，但并非没有副作用。其中一些副作用危及进一步的治疗，最终导致恶性肿瘤和死亡率的晚期阶段。因此，需要更好、更安全的抗癌化合物，如天然存在的化合物。寻找这些化合物最丰富的自然环境之一是海洋，自 20 世纪 50 年代以来，海洋资源一直在被生物勘探。
目前有三种海洋抗癌药物上市（Yondelis、Cytosar-U 和 Halaven），还有其他几种正在进行临床试验。这篇综述讨论了临床应用和临床试验中的海洋衍生产品，并讨论了这些化合物的生长抑制或促凋亡特性的可用文献，以及支持这些细胞生物学现象的分子机制。
海洋环境可能蕴藏着有前途的抗癌化合物，值得在这一领域进行进一步的研究，但要尊重正在进行药物发现和随后用于药物开发的自然生态系统。
