Advances in Phenazines over the Past Decade: Review of Their Pharmacological Activities, Mechanisms of Action, Biosynthetic Pathways and Synthetic Strategies

Overview

Journal Mar Drugs

Publisher MDPI

Specialties Biology
Pharmacology

Date 2021 Nov 25

PMID 34822481

Citations 19

Authors

Junjie Yan

Weiwei Liu

Jiatong Cai

Yiming Wang

Dahong Li

Huiming Hua

Hao Cao

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Phenazines are a large group of nitrogen-containing heterocycles, providing diverse chemical structures and various biological activities. Natural phenazines are mainly isolated from marine and terrestrial microorganisms. So far, more than 100 different natural compounds and over 6000 synthetic derivatives have been found and investigated. Many phenazines show great pharmacological activity in various fields, such as antimicrobial, antiparasitic, neuroprotective, insecticidal, anti-inflammatory and anticancer activity. Researchers continued to investigate these compounds and hope to develop them as medicines. Cimmino et al. published a significant review about anticancer activity of phenazines, containing articles from 2000 to 2011. Here, we mainly summarize articles from 2012 to 2021. According to sources of compounds, phenazines were categorized into natural phenazines and synthetic phenazine derivatives in this review. Their pharmacological activities, mechanisms of action, biosynthetic pathways and synthetic strategies were summarized. These may provide guidance for the investigation on phenazines in the future.

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