-
公开(公告)号:US20210041452A1
公开(公告)日:2021-02-11
申请号:US16634388
申请日:2018-07-30
Applicant: The Trustees of Princeton University
Inventor: Mohammad R. SEYEDSAYAMDOST , Fei XU , Yihan WU , Leah BUSHIN , Katherine Davis
Abstract: Microorganisms are prolific producers of natural products, a group of molecules that make up the majority of drugs approved by the FDA in the past 35 years. After decades of mining, the low-hanging fruit has been picked and so discovery of drug-like molecules from microorganisms has come to a near-halt. The reason for this lack of productivity is that most biosynthetic pathways that give rise to natural products are not active under typical laboratory growth conditions. These so-called ‘cryptic’ or ‘silent’ pathways are a major source of new bioactive molecules and methods that reliably activate them could have a profound impact on drug discovery. Disclosed herein is a rapid genetics-free method for eliciting and detecting cryptic metabolites using an imaging mass spectrometry-based approach. An organism of choice is challenged with elicitors from a small molecule library. The molecules elicited are then imaged by mass spec, which allows for rapid identification of cryptic metabolites. These are then isolated and characterized. Employing the disclosed approach activated production of cryptic glycopeptides from an actinomycete bacterium. The molecules that result, the keratinimicins and keratinicyclins, are metabolites with important structural features. At least two of these, keratinimicins B and C, are highly bioactive against several pathogenic strains. This approach will allow for rapid activation and identification of cryptic metabolites from diverse microorganisms in the future.
-
公开(公告)号:US20230123785A1
公开(公告)日:2023-04-20
申请号:US18072800
申请日:2022-12-01
Applicant: The Trustees of Princeton University
Inventor: Mohammad R. SEYEDSAYAMDOST , Fei XU , Yihan WU , Leah BUSHIN , Katherine Davis
Abstract: Microorganisms are prolific producers of natural products, a group of molecules that make up the majority of drugs approved by the FDA in the past 35 years. After decades of mining, the low-hanging fruit has been picked and so discovery of drug-like molecules from microorganisms has come to a near-halt. The reason for this lack of productivity is that most biosynthetic pathways that give rise to natural products are not active under typical laboratory growth conditions. These so-called ‘cryptic’ or ‘silent’ pathways are a major source of new bioactive molecules and methods that reliably activate them could have a profound impact on drug discovery. Disclosed herein is a rapid genetics-free method for eliciting and detecting cryptic metabolites using an imaging mass spectrometry-based approach. An organism of choice is challenged with elicitors from a small molecule library. The molecules elicited are then imaged by mass spec, which allows for rapid identification of cryptic metabolites. These are then isolated and characterized. Employing the disclosed approach activated production of cryptic glycopeptides from an actinomycete bacterium. The molecules that result, the keratinimicins and keratinicyclins, are metabolites with important structural features. At least two of these, keratinimicins B and C, are highly bioactive against several pathogenic strains. This approach will allow for rapid activation and identification of cryptic metabolites from diverse microorganisms in the future.
-
3.
公开(公告)号:US20200079823A1
公开(公告)日:2020-03-12
申请号:US16610330
申请日:2018-05-11
Applicant: The Trustees of Princeton University
Inventor: Mohammad R. SEYEDSAYAMDOST , Fei XU , Kyuho MOON , Behnam NAZARI
Abstract: Disclosed is a high-throughput transcriptional assay format in Actinomycete bacteria, and Streptomyces spp. in particular, that leverages eGFP, inserted both at a neutral site and inside the biosynthetic cluster of interest, as a read-out for secondary metabolite synthesis. Using this approach, a silent gene cluster in Streptomyces albus J1074 was induced. The cytotoxins etoposide and ivermectin were revealed as potent inducers, allowing the isolation and structural characterization of nearly 20 novel small molecule products of the chosen cluster. One of these molecules is a novel antifungal, while several others inhibit a cysteine protease implicated in cancer. Studies addressing the mechanism of induction by the two elicitors led to the identification of a pathway-specific transcriptional repressor that silences the gene cluster under normal growth conditions. The successful implementation of this approach will allow future discovery of cryptic metabolites with useful bioactivities from Actinomycete bacteria.
-
-