Identification of Bioactive Agents and Immunomodulatory Factors from Seashells of the Persian Gulf

Research in marine pharmacology will promise new bioactive agents. The marine bioenvironment is the unique resource for bioactive agents that could not be found in terrestrial organisms. A total of known 611 seashells species in the Persian Gulf were investigated for synonymy in OBIS database. Then, all the species, including their synonymy were searched in PubMed database to find their isolated bioactive agents. From 611 known seashells in the Persian Gulf, 172 genera/species had bioactive compounds. Bioactive agents were isolated and purified for 16 genera/ species. The crude or purified extracts from these seashells had immunomodulatory effects (6 seashells), anti-toxicologic effects (4 seashells), analgesic (1 seashell), cardiotonic and vasoactive agents (2 seashells), hypolipidemic agents (4 seashells), anti-osteoporotic and osteoblastic agents (2 seashells) and anti-dermatitis effect (1 seashell). The known seashells from the Persian Gulf have bioactive and immunomodulatory compounds and increase in the efforts to isolate these agents will promise a treasure for novel anti-infective agents.