Abstract :Marine environment is acquiring even more interest as a source of new bioactive compounds, among
these marine organism’s derived bioactive peptides are considered a promising group of natural
substances exhibiting different biological activities: antimicrobial, anticancer, antihypertensive, antiinflammatory
and so on. In particular antimicrobial activity may encounter the emerging severe
problem of the antibiotic-resistant microorganisms. Among marine animals, sponges have attracted
in the years a great interest of pharmacologists, chemists and biochemists as a rich source of peculiar
antimicrobial compounds that they have evolved to protect themselves due to their sessile nature.
Sponges produce a great variety of antimicrobial peptides with peculiar structural features showing
antifungal, antibacterial and antiviral properties. In this review we will focus on those peptides
showing the most interesting antimicrobial activities as a proposal for their exploitation as new
future drugs.