New antibiotic structures from fermentations.
BACKGROUND
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.


METHODS
This article provides a survey of patent literature, with supporting data from scientific literature wherever available, for antibiotics discovered during 2005 - 2009 from fermentations.


RESULTS
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.


CONCLUSIONS
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.
Singh
Sheo B
SB
Merck Research Laboratories, xDPS, 126 E. Lincoln Ave., RY33-612, Rahway, NJ 07065, USA. sheo_singh@merck.com
Young
Katherine
K
D000900:Anti-Bacterial Agents / Q000096:biosynthesis* / Q000737:chemistry / Q000494:pharmacology; D001688:Biological Products / Q000096:biosynthesis* / Q000737:chemistry / Q000494:pharmacology; D017576:Daptomycin / Q000096:biosynthesis / Q000737:chemistry / Q000494:pharmacology; D015195:Drug Design; D005285:Fermentation; D016908:Gram-Positive Bacterial Infections / Q000188:drug therapy; D006801:Humans
D000900:Anti-Bacterial Agents; D001688:Biological Products; D017576:Daptomycin