S129: Exploring chemically and biologically diverse marine and terrestrial microorganisms through the Panama ICBG Program

The country of Panama is remarkable for its extensive coastline in both the tropical Atlantic (Caribbean Sea) and Pacific Oceans.  A component of the drug discovery efforts of the Panama ICBG program focuses on the discovery of novel bioactive components from marine cyanobacteria collected in these diverse marine habitats.  These efforts continue to be highly productive with new collections providing a rich assortment of novel chemotypes.  In the past year, most of these efforts have increasingly focused on collections obtained from the Coiba National Park located in the state of Veraguas in the Pacific.  Previous collections from this local had provided the remarkably antiproliferative peptide, coibamide A.  While collections of the same producing organism have been made in subsequent years so as to provide an increased supply as well as a culture source, many additional cyanobacteria have also been collected from this region.  Using assays designed to detect cancer cell cytotoxicity and antiparasitic properties, the extracts of these newer collections have been subjected to bioassay guided isolation efforts.  These efforts have been richly rewarded with the discovery of a number of new chemotypes of bioactive natural products deriving from both the NRPS and PKS pathways.  Isolation and structure elucidation of several novel bioactive metabolites deriving from field collected marine cyanobacteria will be presented.