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Fungi: Pioneers of chemical creativity – Techniques and strategies to uncover fungal chemistry

Summary

This review explores how fungi produce remarkable chemical compounds that have been transformed into important medicines for over a century. Starting with penicillin in the 1940s, scientists have discovered dozens of fungal-derived drugs used to treat infections, prevent organ rejection, lower cholesterol, and fight cancer. Modern technology now allows researchers to discover and analyze these compounds much faster and with smaller samples than ever before.

Background

Fungi have served as prolific sources of secondary metabolites for over a century, producing compounds with diverse structures and biological activities. Recent technological advances in analytical chemistry, genome mining, and synthetic biology have dramatically enhanced the discovery and characterization of fungal natural products for drug development and biotechnological applications.

Objective

This review aims to provide a comprehensive overview of fungal secondary metabolite-derived drugs and drug leads, discuss how natural product discovery has evolved from earlier approaches to modern techniques, and outline strategies to systematically explore fungal genomes and secondary metabolomes using contemporary analytical and synthetic biology approaches.

Results

The review documents over 30 major fungal-derived drugs and drug leads spanning multiple therapeutic categories including antibiotics, antiretrovirals, immunosuppressants, and anticancer agents. Technical innovations in high-field NMR, high-resolution mass spectrometry, and hyphenated techniques now enable structure elucidation with minimal sample amounts, while genome mining facilitates discovery of silent biosynthetic gene clusters.

Conclusion

Fungal secondary metabolites remain invaluable sources for drug discovery and biotechnological applications, with ongoing technological advances accelerating compound identification and characterization. Interdisciplinary collaboration between mycologists, chemists, and synthetic biologists is essential to fully exploit the potential of fungal metabolomes for therapeutic development.
  • Published in:IMA Fungus,
  • Study Type:Review,
  • Source: 10.3897/imafungus.16.142462; PMID: 40093757
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