New antibiotic active against MRSA and anthrax discovered as potential broad-spectrum therapeutic agent
 |
Baulamycin is one of a new class of compounds extracted from marine microorganisms collected by David Shermans team in Costa Rica.
|
David Sherman of the Life Sciences Institute found that a new class of compounds extracted from marine microorganisms from Costa Rica's eastern Pacific waters decreased the virulence of both MRSA and anthrax. The compounds were discovered after Sherman screened the CCG's library of natural products derived from Costa Rica, Panama and Papua New Guinea.
"We went after a target based on highly potent virulence factors--siderophores," Sherman said. "We first knocked out the genes responsible for making these iron-binding substances, and once we knew which genes those were, we had our critical drug target. With that information, we screened for molecules that could inhibit that target and stop the production of the virulence factors."
Baulamycins A and B, broad-spectrum antibiotics identified as inhibitors of siderophore biosynthesis in Staphylococcus aureus and Bacillus anthracis (Journal of the American Chemical Society)
The Role of HTS in Drug Discovery at the University of Michigan
CCG leadership recently published an overview of drug discovery at U-M. "The primary objective of the CCG is to assist biomedical researchers in identifying small molecules, genes or natural products for drug and probe discovery. This is early drug discovery as it can provide target validation, lead compounds, and/or probes," they wrote.
The Role of HTS in Drug Discovery at the University of Michigan, Combinatorial Chemistry & High Throughput Screening (Combinatorial Chemistry & High Throughput Screening)