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Diversifying microbial natural products for drug discovery
V Knight1, J-J Sanglier, D DiTullio
1Cetek Corporation, 260 Cedar Hill St., Marlborough, MA 01752, USA.
Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology
|July 3, 2003
Summary
Nature provides many drugs, but microbial natural product drug discovery is competitive. This review explores efficient methods to diversify microbial strains and extracts, reducing redundancy for drug development.
Area of Science:
- Microbiology
- Natural Product Chemistry
- Drug Discovery
Background:
- Historically, natural products are a primary source of drugs.
- Over 20,000 microbial secondary metabolites are known, yet few become drugs.
- Natural product drug discovery faces intense competition from synthetic chemical libraries.
Purpose of the Study:
- To review strategies for enhancing microbial natural product discovery.
- To focus on methods for diversifying microbial strains and extract libraries.
- To address the need for increased efficiency and reduced redundancy in natural product programs.
Main Methods:
- Collection of environmental samples and strain selection.
- Metabolic expression and genetic exploitation of microbial resources.
- Chemical dereplication and sample preparation techniques.
Main Results:
- Discusses approaches to diversify microbial natural product strains.
- Highlights methods to create diverse extract libraries.
- Emphasizes reducing genetic and chemical redundancy in discovery pipelines.
Conclusions:
- Efficient and diverse natural product discovery is crucial for drug development.
- Optimizing each step, from sample collection to dereplication, is necessary.
- Diversification strategies are key to overcoming competition and redundancy in the field.
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