The History of Marine Antibiotics Of course, the history of marine fungi and medicine is not entirely so recent. Some compounds were recognized in the past, with one of the first actually being a very early antibiotic in its own right. That would be cephalosporin C that was commercialized in the 1950’s. This was followed up in the 1970’s with gliotoxin, the first compound to be found from a fungi in deep sea sediments. Then indanonaftol A, the first antibiotic from a marine yeast. Slowly, but steadily, the number of overall compounds from marine fungi has been increasing. 272 of them by 2002, with nearly 200 new compounds being described every other year since. Unfortunately, while many of these compounds are useful indeed, less than 5% turn out to have any antibacterial properties and even fewer that have a strong enough capability to warrant development into a new official medicine. Arguably one of the most promising in the past two decades has been the...
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