A study on Bioactive Compounds Derived from Brown Seaweeds and their Therapeutic Applications towards Various Diseases

Traditionally seaweeds are used as food additives, flavouring agents and as foodstuffs in many countries and the research on the extraction of bioactive substances have been conducted all around the globe. In India even though the seaweeds are mainly exploited as a source of phycocolloids such as agar-agar, alginate and carrageenan, further information on the bioutilization of Indian seaweeds is limited as not much has been done to systemically study their therapeutic potential. Marine brown seaweeds are rich in bioactive metabolites that could be potentially exploited in many applications like industry, pharmacy etc. Several efforts have been made to isolate the bioactive compounds and to explore its mechanism of actions. Fucoidan, phloroglucinol, fucoxanthin are some of the bioactive compounds present in brown seaweeds showing antimicrobial, antiinflammatory, anti-diabetic, antioxidant and antiviral properties. The present review attempts to discuss the reports available on the extraction and identification of compounds and to examine the potential and therapeutic effects of the metabolites existing in the brown macroalgae.