Biological activities and potential health benefits of sulfated polysaccharides derived from marine algae

Recently, a great deal of interest has been developed to isolate novel bioactive compounds from marine resources because of their numerous health beneficial effects. Among marine resources, marine algae are valuable sources of structurally diverse bioactive compounds. The cell walls of marine algae are rich in sulfated polysaccharides (SPs) such as fucoidans in brown algae, carrageenans in red algae and ulvans in green algae. These SPs exhibit many beneficial biological activities such as anticoagulant, antiviral, antioxidative, anticancer and immunomodulating activities. Therefore, marine algae derived SPs have great potential for further development as products in nutraceutical, pharmaceutical and cosmeceutical areas. This contribution presents an overview of biological activities and potential health benefits of SPs derived from marine algae. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.