Nutraceutical and pharmacological implications of marine carbohydrates

Abstract

Current day's research has been focusing much on the potential pharmacological or nutraceutical agents of selective health benefits with less toxicity. As a consequence of increased demand of nutritional supplements of great medicinal values, development of therapeutic agents from natural sources, in particular, marine environment are being considered much important. A diverse array of marine natural products containing medicinally useful nutritional substances, i.e., marine nutraceuticals have been focused to the benefit of mankind. Carbohydrates, by being constituted in considerable amount of many marine organisms display several nutraceutical and pharmaceutical behavior to defend from various diseases. Moreover, the carbohydrates from algae as well as from shellfish wastes, like chitosan and its derivatives, showed tremendous applications in biology and biomedicine. In the current chapter, several of marine carbohydrates from various marine flora and fauna have been covered with their applications and prospects in the development of nutraceuticals and pharmaceuticals.

Keywords: Algae; Chitosan; Marine nutraceuticals; Pharmaceuticals; Shellfish; Sulfated polysaccharides.