Drugs from hidden bugs: their discovery via untapped resources

Area of Science:

• Drug Discovery
• Natural Products Chemistry
• Metagenomics

Background:

• The drug discovery pipeline demands a continuous supply of novel chemical entities.
• Synthetic chemistry, while efficient, yields less diverse compounds compared to natural products.
• A vast majority of microbial biodiversity remains untapped for drug discovery due to cultivation challenges.

Purpose of the Study:

• To explore natural products from microbial secondary metabolism as a source for drug discovery.
• To investigate the potential of metagenomics in accessing compounds from unculturable bacteria.

Main Methods:

• Review of existing literature on drug discovery sources.
• Analysis of the chemical diversity of synthetic versus natural compounds.
• Discussion of technological advancements in metagenomics for microbial compound discovery.

Main Results:

• Natural products, particularly from microbial sources, offer greater chemical diversity than synthetic molecules.
• Over 95% of bacterial organisms are currently unexploited due to difficulties in cultivation.
• Metagenomic technologies provide a viable method to access compounds from these previously inaccessible microbial sources.

Conclusions:

• Metagenomics represents a significant advancement in accessing novel chemical scaffolds for drug discovery.
• Exploiting the metabolic potential of unculturable bacteria through metagenomics can revitalize the drug discovery pipeline.