The marine world expresses a great scope for diverse novel scaffolds with
unusual skeleton nature. Polyphenols, phycocolloids, pigments, fucoidans, peptides,
pigments, and phlorotannins are the main classes of compounds provided by marine
resources. Some of these structures displayed astonishing biological activities and
successfully proceeded to marketed drugs for the treatment of different human
diseases. There are many examples of successful commercially available marine-derived drugs such as cytarabine (Cytosar-U®) for acute myelocytic leukemia,
trabectedin (Yondelis®) for ovarian cancer, Eribulin (Halaven®) for metastatic breast
cancer, Ziconotide (Prialt®) for severe chronic pain, and Vidarabine (Ara-A) for viral
infections. Oceans and their immense biodiversity have gifted humanity with a
pathway out of the obstacles of health care. The constant need for innovation has been
a great challenge for the pharmaceutical industry especially in finding new sources of
active compounds. This chapter discussed the clinically approved marine-derived
compounds and their impact on different diseases, focusing on those with granted
approval in the last decade from 2011 to 2021. We also highlighted the underlying
mechanism of actions through in vivo, in vitro, and computational in silico studies.
Hopefully, this chapter will help scientists to develop a novel marine-derived drug.
Keywords: Marine, Phycocolloids, Fucoidans, Cytarabine, Leukemia, Vidarabine, Pharmaceutical Drugs, Natural Products (NPs).
