Pipeline for novel product isolation from marine sponges (Phylum: Porifera) and informatics tools for the process

Pharmaceutical industries are still searching for innovative drugs. Several diseases diagnosed hitherto have no effective medicine. Scientists are trying to discover novel drug entities with low toxicity to cure and prevent such diseases. A lead compound that has the properties of desired new drug is generally used as a model for chemical modification. Bacteria, fungi, plants and marine organisms consist of several natural products with low molecular mass and they exhibit unique structural diversity, and are used for identifying new lead structures. Marine sponges act as reservoirs of bioactive compounds with wide spectrum application in nutraceutical and pharmaceutical industries. Bioactive compounds such as alkaloids, terpenoids, sterols, peptides, polyketides etc. have been isolated from these organisms. There are different microbial communities (bacteria, fungi, actinomycetes) with novel bioactive compounds, which can be isolated from sponges and identification and isolation of novel compounds from sponges is a current area of research. The paper discusses the novel compound identification pipeline from marine sponges and outlines the pertinent informatics tools for the process.