"Blue Amazon" is used to designate the Brazilian Economic Exclusive Zone, which covers an area comparable in size to that of its green counterpart. Indeed, Brazil flaunts a coastline spanning 8000 km through tropical and temperate regions and hosting part of the organisms accredited for the country's megadiversity status. Still, biodiversity may be expressed at different scales of organization; besides species inventory, genetic characteristics of living beings and metabolic expression of their genes meet some of these other layers. These metabolites produced by terrestrial creatures traditionally and lately added to by those from marine organisms are recognized for their pharmaceutical value, since over 50% of small molecule-based medicines are related to natural products. Nonetheless, Brazil gives a modest contribution to the field of pharmacology and even less when considering marine pharmacology, which still lacks comprehensive in-depth assessments toward the bioactivity of marine compounds so far. Therefore, this review examined the last 40 years of Brazilian natural products research, focusing on molecules that evidenced anticancer potential-which represents ~ 15% of marine natural products isolated from Brazilian species. This review discusses the most promising compounds isolated from sponges, cnidarians, ascidians, and microbes in terms of their molecular targets and mechanisms of action. Wrapping up, the review delivers an outlook on the challenges that stand against developing groundbreaking natural products research in Brazil and on a means of surpassing these matters.

中文翻译：

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来自巴西蓝色亚马逊的化合物的抗癌潜力

“蓝色亚马逊”用于指定巴西经济专属区，其面积与绿色对应区域的面积相当。事实上，巴西的海岸线长达 8000 公里，穿过热带和温带地区，并拥有部分被认可为该国超级多样性地位的生物。尽管如此，生物多样性可能会在不同的组织规模上表现出来；除了物种清单之外，生物的遗传特征和它们基因的代谢表达也符合其他一些层次。这些由陆生生物产生的代谢物传统上和最近添加到海洋生物中的代谢物因其药用价值而得到认可，因为超过 50% 的小分子药物与天然产物有关。尽管如此，巴西对药理学领域的贡献不大，在考虑海洋药理学时甚至更少，迄今为止，它仍然缺乏对海洋化合物生物活性的全面深入评估。因此，本综述审查了过去 40 年的巴西天然产物研究，重点是证明具有抗癌潜力的分子——占从巴西物种中分离出的海洋天然产物的 15%。本综述讨论了从海绵、刺胞动物、海鞘和微生物中分离出的最有希望的化合物的分子靶标和作用机制。最后，该评论对在巴西开展开创性天然产品研究面临的挑战以及超越这些问题的方法提出了展望。