Bioactive compounds and biological functions of sea cucumbers as potential functional foods

Sea cucumbers are a group of economically important invertebrate marine animals that have been widely used as tonic foods in Asia countries. Various bioactive compounds in sea cucumbers including peptides, triterpene glycosides, polysaccharides, phenols, and lipids have been reported. These compounds demonstrate a myriad of salubrious biological functions such as anti-oxidant, anticancer, anti-inflammation, anti-thrombus, anti-microbes, anti-diabetes, anti-obesity, and learning and memory improvement. This review is to provide a comprehensive and most recent update of these biological functions and their associated bioactive compounds. The management practice to keep sustainable sea cucumbers including natural stock fishery and aquaculture were discussed. The extraction and purification of the bioactive compounds were also summarized, providing a perspective of preparing sea cucumber derived nutraceuticals. It is expected that this review can provide academia and industry an insight of sea cucumbers and their potentials in the development of high value nutraceutical products.