Antimicrobial Peptides Derived from Marine Sponges

Marine environment is acquiring even more interest as a source of new bioactive compounds, among these marine organism's derived bioactive peptides are considered a promising group of natural substances exhibiting different biological activities: antimicrobial, anticancer, antihypertensive, anti-inflammatory and so on. In particular antimicrobial activity may encounter the emerging severe problem of the antibiotic-resistant microorganisms. Among marine animals, sponges have attracted in the years a great interest of pharmacologists, chemists and biochemists as a rich source of peculiar antimicrobial compounds that they have evolved to protect themselves due to their sessile nature. Sponges produce a great variety of antimicrobial peptides with peculiar structural features showing antifungal, antibacterial and antiviral properties. In this review we will focus on those peptides showing the most interesting antimicrobial activities as a proposal for their exploitation as new future drugs