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506984 
Journal Article 
Antitumor Compounds from Marine Actinomycetes 
Olano, C; Mendez, C; Salas, JA 
2009 
1 
Marine Drugs
ISSN: 1660-3397
EISSN: 16603397 
7 
2 
210-248 
English 
Chemotherapy is one of the main treatments used to combat cancer. A great number of antitumor compounds are natural products or their derivatives, mainly produced by microorganisms. In particular, actinomycetes are the producers of a large number of natural products with different biological activities, including antitumor properties. These antitumor compounds belong to several structural classes such as anthracyclines, enediynes, indolocarbazoles, isoprenoides, macrolides, non-ribosomal peptides and others, and they exert antitumor activity by inducing apoptosis through DNA cleavage mediated by topoisomerase I or II inhibition, mitochondria permeabilization, inhibition of key enzymes involved in signal transduction like proteases, or cellular metabolism and in some cases by inhibiting tumor-induced angiogenesis. Marine organisms have attracted special attention in the last years for their ability to produce interesting pharmacological lead compounds. 
anthracycline; indolocarbazole; macrolide; non-ribosomal peptide; synthetase; polyketide synthase; streptomyces chibaensis aubn(1)/7; nonribosomal peptide antibiotics; biosynthetic gene-cluster; nf-kappa-b; salinispora-tropica; natural-products; biological-activity; drug discovery; a-c; physicochemical properties