Coumarin and its derivatives have significantly attracted the attention of medicinal chemists and chemical biologists due to their huge range of biological, and in particular, pharmacological properties. Interesting families of coumarins have been found from marine sources, which has accelerated the drug discovery process by inspiring innovation or even by the identification of analogues with remarkable biological properties. The purpose of this review is to showcase the most interesting marine-derived coumarins from a medicinal chemistry point of view, as well as the novel and useful synthetic routes described to date to achieve these chemical structures. The references that compose this overview were collected from PubMed, Mendeley and SciFinder.
Keywords: biological activity; coumarin; heterocycles; marine natural products.