Marine sponges from Indian Ocean a highly promising source for the discovery of novel bioactive compounds to fight against ageing and age-related diseases
Résumé
Ageing is commonly defined as the accumulation of diverse deleterious changes occurring in cells andtissues with advancing age that are responsible for the increased risk of pathologies such as Alzheimer’sdisease, cardiovascular diseases, neurodegeneration or cancers. As the population of developed countriesis ageing, the prevalence of a variety of age-related diseases is increasing. In order to counteract thismajor healthcare challenge, marine natural products represent an extraordinary reservoir of structurallydiverse bioactive metabolites which may present anti-ageing properties and offer pharmaceutical, cosme-ceutical or nutraceutical applications. Taking into consideration the aforementioned issues, the H2020European project TASCMAR explores marine invertebrates and symbionts from under-investigatedmarine biodiversity hotspots and develops innovative approaches for the discovery and production ofcompounds with anti-ageing activity. The Chemistry Laboratory of Natural Substances and FoodSciences (LCSNSA, University of La R ́eunion) located at R ́eunion island is involved in this ambitiousresearch program and this communication will therefore provide an outline of its contribution to TASC-MAR. We collected a total of 112 sponges from Mayotte and Rodrigues (Indian Ocean). The crudeextracts of the samples were submitted to a biological evaluation against a wide range of differenttargets involved in ageing or age-related diseases. These targets include catalase, sirtuin 1, CDK7,proteasome, Fyn kinase, tyrosinase and elastase. Twenty nine crude extracts have shown promisingresults. The chemical investigation of these 29 extracts for the discovery of molecules with anti-ageingeffects will be discussed.