Leirós Villalba, MartaSánchez Salguero, Jon AndoniAlonso López, EvaRateb, Mostafa E.Houssen, Wael E.Ebel, RainerJaspars, MarcelAlfonso Rancaño, María AmparoBotana López, Luis Miguel2020-11-092020-11-092014Leirós, M.; Sánchez, J.A.; Alonso, E.; Rateb, M.E.; Houssen, W.E.; Ebel, R.; Jaspars, M.; Alfonso, A.; Botana, L.M. Spongionella Secondary Metabolites Protect Mitochondrial Function in Cortical Neurons against Oxidative Stress. Mar. Drugs 2014, 12, 700-718http://hdl.handle.net/10347/23608The marine habitat provides a large number of structurally-diverse bioactive compounds for drug development. Marine sponges have been studied over many years and are found to be a rich source of these bioactive chemicals. This study is focused on the evaluation of the activity of six diterpene derivatives isolated from Spongionella sp. on mitochondrial function using an oxidative in vitro stress model. The test compounds include the Gracilins (A, H, K, J and L) and tetrahydroaplysulphurin-1. Compounds were co-incubated with hydrogen peroxide for 12 hours to determine their protective capacities and their effect on markers of apoptosis and Nrf2/ARE pathways was evaluated. Results conclude that Gracilins preserve neurons against oxidative damage, and that in particular, tetrahydroaplysulphurin-1 shows a complete neuroprotective activity. Oxidative stress is linked to mitochondrial dysfunction and consequently to neurodegenerative disorders like Parkinson and Alzheimer diseases, Friedreich ataxia or Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. This neuroprotection against oxidation conditions suggest that these metabolites could be interesting lead candidates in drug development for neurodegenerative diseaseseng© 2014 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/)http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/DiterpenesPoriferaMitochondrial functionOxidative stressNeurodegenerative disordersjournal article10.3390/md120207001660-3397open access