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New antibiotic structures from fermentations
Sheo B Singh1, Katherine Young
1Merck Research Laboratories, xDPS, 126 E. Lincoln Ave., RY33-612, Rahway, NJ 07065, USA. sheo_singh@merck.com
Importance Of The Field:
Fermentation-derived natural products have been a traditional source of antibiotics and antibiotic leads. Most of these discoveries were made about 50 years ago and continue to serve as leads for new antibiotics even today; however, their value as leads for new antibiotics is slowly fading away. In the last decade two novel classes of antibiotics were approved for clinical practice. One of them, daptomycin, is a natural product.
Areas Covered In This Review:
This article provides a survey of patent literature, with supporting data from scientific literature wherever available, for antibiotics discovered during 2005 - 2009 from fermentations.
What The Reader Will Gain:
Readers will gain an overview of the 44 new antibiotic structures reported from 16 organizations in the last 5 years. The most significant discoveries include platensimycin, platencin, amycolamicin and a number of thiazolyl peptides.
Take Home Message:
Natural products continue to play significant role in the discovery of new antibiotics and clearly a renewed interest in the natural products discovery is warranted to discover novel antibiotics to fight drug resistant bacteria.
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