Bioassays for bioactivity screening

Bioassays are essential for the discovery of novel bioactive compounds as lead structures mostly for medicinal purpose. The goal of a bioactivity-directed isolation process is to isolate bioactive compounds that are capable of curing or alleviating a human or animal ailment and can either be ultimately developed as established drugs directly or provide interesting structural leads. The present chapter deals with the methods of biological evaluations of the extracts and/or pure compounds from marine sources. We review currently available bioassays and techniques and future perspectives of these methodologies from the point of view of the discovery and the characterization of bioactive compounds isolated from various marine sources. The concise details of the various bioassays, screening models, procedures, and its applications have been thoroughly discussed. Last, we discuss the toxicity evaluation, use of animals in clinical trials, and future prospects and potential research avenues available within this field.