Sea cucumbers are a group of economically important invertebrate marine animals that have been widely used as tonic foods in Asia countries. Various bioactive compounds in sea cucumbers including peptides, triterpene glycosides, polysaccharides, phenols, and lipids have been reported. These compounds demonstrate a myriad of salubrious biological functions such as anti-oxidant, anticancer, anti-inflammation, anti-thrombus, anti-microbes, anti-diabetes, anti-obesity, and learning and memory improvement. This review is to provide a comprehensive and most recent update of these biological functions and their associated bioactive compounds. The management practice to keep sustainable sea cucumbers including natural stock fishery and aquaculture were discussed. The extraction and purification of the bioactive compounds were also summarized, providing a perspective of preparing sea cucumber derived nutraceuticals. It is expected that this review can provide academia and industry an insight of sea cucumbers and their potentials in the development of high value nutraceutical products.

海参是一组在经济上很重要的无脊椎动物海洋动物，在亚洲国家已被广泛用作滋补食品。已经报道了海参中的各种生物活性化合物，包括肽，三萜糖苷，多糖，酚和脂质。这些化合物具有多种有益的生物学功能，例如抗氧化剂，抗癌剂，抗炎剂，抗血栓，抗微生物剂，抗糖尿病药，抗肥胖症以及学习和记忆力的改善。这篇综述旨在提供这些生物学功能及其相关生物活性化合物的全面且最新的更新。讨论了保持包括自然渔业和水产养殖在内的可持续海参的管理实践。还概述了生物活性化合物的提取和纯化，为制备海参衍生的保健食品提供了一个视角。预期该审查可以为学术界和行业提供有关海参及其在开发高价值营养产品方面的潜力的见识。