Synthetic Studies of Marine Bioactive Natural Products and Analogs to Develop Novel Drug Leads

Marine natural products are considered promising sources of drug candidates, especially in the field of anticancer drugs or antibiotics. However, the scarce supply of compounds from natural sources often limits further drug development, and consequently, efficient total synthesis of marine natural products and their derivatives can overcome this drawback. In addition, the synthesis of truncated analogs based on structure-activity relationship (SAR) studies would facilitate the discovery of more accessible drug lead compounds with improved bioactive specificity or ADMET profiles. This Special Issue gathers eight publications, including two reviews and six research articles, focusing on the synthetic study of bioactive marine natural products and their truncated analogs. We hope that many readers will find interest in the contents of this Special Issue, and that it will offer some perspectives for the future development of novel marine-natural-product-derived drug leads for intractable diseases.