ABSTRACT
The marine environment has always been a source of novel classes of biologically active compounds. Primitive organisms are the source of a vast range of secondary metabolites which enable them to flourish in a harsh marine environment, and in particular huge wealth of unique and rare novel classes of metabolites produced by marine sponges has continuously attracted the attention of researchers who are trying to develop new drugs. The present chapter describes the research on novel anticancer alkaloids obtained from marine sponges. More than 110 isolated novel antitumor cytotoxic compounds confirmed activity in vitro cancer cell lines bioassay and are of current interest to national cancer institutes for further in vivo evaluation. This chapter describes the structure, origin cytotoxic, and anticancer evaluation of sponge-derived alkaloids.
