Anticancer compounds from cyanobacterium Lyngbya species: a review

The use of synthetic anticancer drugs and other methods followed in cancer therapy have several side effects; and ineffective methods or drugs give a way to the emergence of drug resistant cancer cells, with the intrinsic metastasis as the aftermath. Anticancer efficacy of many cyanobacterial compounds has been claimed in literature. This review considers 144 compounds isolated and characterized from seven species of the non-nitrogen fixing filamentous cyanobacterium Lyngbya, as the source of antineoplastic agents, which have been screened primarily with cancer cell lines. Structure and information of Lyngbya compounds were retrieved from databases, PubChem, ChemSpider and ChEBI. Information and clinical status of Lyngbya compounds are summarized, and those might be the future anticancer drugs for drug-resistant cancer cells even, as complementary/adduct drugs, if pursued thoroughly in pharmacology and pharmaceutics.