*Review* **Anti-Inflammatory Effects of Compounds from Echinoderms**

**Hardik Ghelani, Md Khursheed, Thomas Edward Adrian and Reem Kais Jan \***

College of Medicine, Mohammed Bin Rashid University of Medicine and Health Sciences, Dubai P.O. Box 505055, United Arab Emirates

**\*** Correspondence: reem.jan@mbru.ac.ae; Tel.: +971-4-383-8733

**Abstract:** Chronic inflammation can extensively burden a healthcare system. Several synthetic anti-inflammatory drugs are currently available in clinical practice, but each has its own side effect profile. The planet is gifted with vast and diverse oceans, which provide a treasure of bioactive compounds, the chemical structures of which may provide valuable pharmaceutical agents. Marine organisms contain a variety of bioactive compounds, some of which have anti-inflammatory activity and have received considerable attention from the scientific community for the development of anti-inflammatory drugs. This review describes such bioactive compounds, as well as crude extracts (published during 2010–2022) from echinoderms: namely, sea cucumbers, sea urchins, and starfish. Moreover, we also include their chemical structures, evaluation models, and anti-inflammatory activities, including the molecular mechanism(s) of these compounds. This paper also highlights the potential applications of those marine-derived compounds in the pharmaceutical industry to develop leads for the clinical pipeline. In conclusion, this review can serve as a well-documented reference for the research progress on the development of potential anti-inflammatory drugs from echinoderms against various chronic inflammatory conditions.

**Keywords:** anti-inflammatory activity; inflammatory pathways; marine drugs; echinoderm; sea cucumber; sea urchin; starfish

Anti-Inflammatory Effects of Compounds from Echinoderms. *Mar. Drugs* **2022**, *20*, 693. https://doi.org/

Academic Editors: Donatella Degl'Innocenti and Marzia Vasarri

**Citation:** Ghelani, H.; Khursheed, M.;

Adrian, T.E.; Jan, R.K.

10.3390/md20110693

Received: 27 September 2022 Accepted: 31 October 2022 Published: 3 November 2022

**Publisher's Note:** MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

**Copyright:** © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/).
