Fucoidan is a fucose-containing sulfated 20 kDal polysaccharide found mainly in various species of brown algae and brown seaweed. It is a multifunctional polysaccharide with a potential anti-tumor activity. Its anticancer effect involves the apoptosis mechanism. Fucoidan is also known to synergize with anti-cancer chemotherapeutic agents and radiation.  HTH.

Hi,

I've been studying various fractions rich in fucoidans I extracted from Laminaria hyperborea and tested against bacteria with no antibacterial effect. I will try and screen against fungi and virus so if  you follow my work you might hear about such results soon. There is interesting antioxidant potential so I will also try to test these fractions for anti-inflammatory and anti-tumor.

Cheers

Hi  Carvalho. I have also tried for the antibacterial activity.  I didnt get any results. Thats why i raised the question, whether fucoidan can have antimicrobial activity. because the above mentioned paper says a good activity against Aeromonas hydrophila (gram negative), I am just wondering how its possible and what kind of mechanism fucoidan can posses for the antimicrobial. Since i didnt get any detail information on the antimicrobial activity of pure fucoidan. 

 I hope they continue their studies and try to sort that one out so we can all understand how the fucoidan is acting to inhibit the bacteria growth. What I know is that each seaweed specie produces its own fucoidan with a specific structure conformation. Depending on the way you extract the fucoidan, you can induce even more variability to that conformation. All that variability is most probably going to influence how reactive the fucoidan will be and maybe they found one type of fucoidan that has proper mechanisms that somehow inhibit the bacteria growth.

You could try to contact the authors, they might have already some answers!!!

Hi Saravana,

In an article by Mosin et al. (2016) they show antimicrobial activity (in vitro) of fucoidan against Gram negative and Gram positive human pathogens. They postulate the mechanisms of action against the various Gram classes in their study, but always with a correlation to sulphate content of the fucoidan fractions.

Please see paper attached for more detail.

Regards,

Thanks Carvalho  and Grant for the suggestions.

Dear Saravina, as far as I am aware the molecular mechanisms how these compounds can inhibit bacterial growth is not yet discovered. We recently found that the fucose of N-glycans are essential for growth inhibition of bacteria, similar reasons may also play the fucose residues for the fucoidans - here is a link of the article, the print will be out in a couple of days: 

Article Comparison of Anti-Pathogenic Activities of the Human and Bo...