Jellyfish from European seas as valuable source of bioactive and health promoting compounds with nutraceutical value

The massive blooms of jellyfish (JF), that more and more frequently explode in European seas, negatively impact human health and activities in coastal waters, including aquaculture. As an alternative, these marine gelatinous organisms, should be viewed through a more positive perspective as a new important bio-resource. Indeed, known for their nutritional and medical value in the Chinese pharmacopeia, increasing attention has been pointed to jellyfish as an unexploited source of essential nutrients, novel bioactive metabolites, and lead compounds. Within the H2020 European GoJelly project, JF and their biodiversity, were analysed as an available and abundant source of new natural health-promoting compounds. Different species, Rhizostoma pulmo (Macrì, 1778) that undergoes recurrent outbreaks in the Mediterranean coastal waters, and the zooxanthellatae JF species, as Cotylorhiza tuberculate and Cassiopea andromeda, this last one not native of Mediterranean Sea), were considered as source of new bioactive compounds, both proteinaceous (such as collagen) and non-proteinaceous compounds, as the hydroalcoholic-soluble extracts. R. pulmo peptides were analysed for their antioxidant activity in vitro and in HEKa cell cultures, and the potential immunomodulatory activity of low molecular weight peptides were investigated in monocytes-macrophages couture system (De Domenico et al., 2019). Hydroalcoholic extracts from C. tuberculata and C. andromeda moreover, were assayed for their cytotoxicity effects on cancer cells and for their ability to modulate Gap Junction Intercellular Communication (GJIC) (De Rinaldis et al., in preparation).