Extraction, isolation, structure elucidation and biologic screening of compounds from soft corals of Persian Gulf

Principle Investigator:Afsaneh Yegdaneh

Co-Principle Investigator: Anuchit Plubrukarn

The marine biosphere is a source of active principles and marine natural products have attracted scientists from different disciplines which led to the discovery of several secondary metabolites with potent biological activities. The unique field of marine natural products chemistry matured in the last decade but it is a very young field in our country, Iran. Despite the large amount of marine organisms in the Persian Gulf and Oman Sea, there are a few studies on the chemistry of these creatures. In this research, we are going to isolate bioactive metabolites from soft corals of Iran for the first time. In our last works, we have isolated and elucidated metabolites of seaweeds and sea cucumbers but we are going to focus on isolation of bioactive compounds from soft corals such as Sinularia sp., Lobophylum sp., Xenica sp. and other similar soft corals in this study. On the other hand a new set up for a different type of marine organisms (soft corals) is going to happen.

After collection of different species of soft corals by diving from Persian gulf, various extraction methods will be done. Partitioning methods such as Kupchan partitioning method is the next step. Several chromatography techniques such as flash, MPLC and HPLC will done ad isolated compounds will be elucidated by NMR (1D and 2D) techniques, Mass, IR and UV spectroscopy. All compounds will test about cytotoxic activities on different cell lines.

This project will led to isolation of several new and novel structures may be potential new drugs after complementary tests.  Beside International collaboration with University of Naples, Italy and Prince of Songkhla University, Thailand is going to happen and continue during this research that will lead to five international publications. One PhD students is going to be trained in this novel filed. Five abstracts in different congresses especially international events is the next outcome and the most important result of this project is a new setting about isolation and structure elucidation of marine natural product from soft corals for the first time.