Total synthesis and antimicrobial evaluation of natural albomycins against clinical pathogens

Development of effective antimicrobial agents continues to be a great challenge, particularly due to the increasing resistance of superbugs and frequent hospital breakouts. There is an urgent need for more potent and safer antibiotics with novel scaffolds. As historically many commercial drugs were derived from natural products, discovery of antimicrobial agents from complex natural product structures still holds a great promise. Herein, we report the total synthesis of natural albomycins δ₁ (1a), δ₂ (1b), and ε (1c), which validates the structures of these peptidylnucleoside compounds and allows for synthetic access to bioactive albomycin analogs. The efficient synthesis of albomycins enables extensive evaluations of these natural products against model bacteria and clinical pathogens. Albomycin δ₂ has the potential to be developed into an antibacterial drug to treat Streptococcus pneumoniae and Staphylococcus aureus infections.