RESUMO
The continuing emergence of antibiotic-resistant microbes highlights the need for the identification of new chemotypes with antimicrobial activity. One of the most prolific sources of antimicrobial molecules has been the systematic screening of natural product samples. The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the National Cancer Institute here report a large screen of 326,656 partially purified natural product fractions against a panel of four microbial pathogens, resulting in the identification of >3000 fractions with antifungal and/or antibacterial activity. A small sample of these active fractions was further purified and the chemical structures responsible for the antimicrobial activity were elucidated. The proof-of-concept study identified many different chemotypes, several of which have not previously been reported to have antimicrobial activity. The results show that there remain many unidentified antibiotic compounds from nature.
Assuntos
Anti-Infecciosos , Produtos Biológicos , Estados Unidos , Produtos Biológicos/farmacologia , Produtos Biológicos/química , National Cancer Institute (U.S.) , Anti-Infecciosos/farmacologia , Antibacterianos/farmacologia , Extratos VegetaisRESUMO
National Cancer Institute (NCI) Program for Natural Product Discovery is a new initiative aimed at creating new technologies for natural product-based drug discovery. Here, we present the development of a neural network-based bioinformatics platform for visualization and analysis of natural product high-throughput screening data using the NCI's 60 human tumor cell anticancer drug screen. We demonstrate how the tool enables visualization of similar patterns of response that can be parsed both chemically and taxonomically, grouping NCI-60 biological profiles in one easy-to-use bioinformatics interface.