1.Specific hypotheses addressed by my research work

Respect to terrestrial natural resources that have been being intense research subjects for drug discovery, marine organisms, especially benthic invertebrates (sponges, corals, etc.) relatively received less attention from natural product chemists and pharmacologists as well. However, this situation has been changed remarkably since 1970’s, when many structurally intriguing, biologically promising compounds were isolated from various marine fauna and flora by scientists of mainly U.S., Europe and Japan. In the field of marine natural products research, China is a latter-coming and less active player even though China has a very long history to use marine organisms to treat various diseases. Fortunately, Chinese government has realized the importance to explore marine resource for developing useful products (mainly marine drugs) and the underdeveloped situation of China in the field. Since year 1990, Chinese government has launched several projects, namely “863” projects, to support scientists carrying out marine natural products research. In the frame of this project, we proposed a project entitled “Search for Novel Bioactive Compounds from Chinese Benthic Invertebrate”was approved in year 2000 when I came back to China joining SIMM from abroad. The basic idea/hypothesis of the proposed project is that the marine environment respect to that of land is even worse and marine organisms competing for food and spaces are more strict than species living on the land. In order to survive in marine, marine organisms, particularly marine invertebrates, are forced to produce some chemical substances (secondary metabolites) to defend themselves and to prevent from preying by other potential predators. The marine secondary metabolites compared to those from terrestrial organisms have following advantages:

(1) structure unique and complex

(2) bioactivity strong and very efficient It is believed that new revolutionary drug (like penicillin, etc.) may occur with great possibility from the marine organisms in the future. These years in the course of our continued searching for bioactive compounds from South China Sea marine organisms, we did find that South China Sea possess a great biodiversity and a great chemical diversity as well.

2. Major findings

We have collected 650 marine organisms (sponges, soft corals, etc.) and more than 300 marine collections were chemically investigated in the last decades. In the course of this study, we were able to isolated more than 1700 marine natural products sparing a wide range of structural classes and various biogenetic origins. The research results we obtained have resulted in the publication of > 460 papers on international reputed journals. More than 40 patents were also applied and 26 of which have been approved officially. In addition, I also wrote or co-edited eight books or book chapters and I was more than 80 times invited to present our work on many international conferences as plenary or invited speaker.

3. Describe how our work contributed to our research field

Our research work not only provide quite a lot hit, lead compounds for drug discovery, but also provide many useful information or knowledge about the biology, chemistry, chemo-ecology of South China Sea marine organisms from a scientific point of view. Our research work (our contributions) to the field has attracted considerable the attention of international community and have promoted the development of marine natural product research. Chinese marine natural product research team is now an underestimate force.

Prof. Dr. GUO Yue-Wei is currently as the editorial member of several international SCI journals, such as “Fitoterapia”，“J. Asi. Nat. Prod. Res.”, “Chin. Chem. Letts.”, “Chinese Journal of Natural Medicines”, “ The Mini Rev. Org. Chem.”(regional editor), “ Curr. Med. Chem.”,“The Open Conference Proceedings Journal”, “Natural Product Science”, “Frontiers in Pharcology of Natural Products”, “Natural Product Research and Development", "International Journal of Pharmaceutical Research", etc.

1.12/2011 Yue-Wei Guo, Wen Zhang, Xu Shen, Jia Li, Shui-Chun Mao,Yan Li, Jian-Rong Wang  Chemoecology and bioactivity studies on the South China sea mollusks and their food source organisms, Shanghai Pharmaceutical Association, Shanghai Pharmaceutical Science and Technology Award, 1st prize.

2. 08/2012 Yue-Wei Guo, Wen Zhang, Xu Shen, Jia Li, Shui-Chun Mao, Yan Li, Jian-Rong Wang Chemistry and chemical ecology of South China Sea opisthobranchs and their dietary organisms, China Pharmaceutical Association，China Pharmaceutical Science and Technology Award, 3rd prize.

3. 06/2010 Yue-Wei Guo, Paul-Scheuer-Award for Marine Biotechenology, Akademie gemeinnütziger Wissenschaften Zu Erfurt, Germany