Simple Method Developed to Create Natural Drug Products

A team led by Qian Cheng and Bradley Moore of UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography was recently able to synthesize an antibiotic natural product created by a Hawaiian sea sediment bacterium. They did so by combining a cocktail of enzymes, the protein catalysts inside cells, in a relatively simple mixing process inside a laboratory flask. “This study may signal the start of a new era in how drugs are synthesized,” said Moore. Most of the medicinal drugs on the market today are made synthetically. Researchers such as Moore and Scripps Oceanography’s Bill Fenical have looked to the oceans as rich sources of new natural products to potentially combat diseases such as cancer. The antibiotic synthesized in Moore’s laboratory, called enterocin, was assembled in approximately two hours. The new research also carries the potential to combine certain natural enzymes to produce new molecules that typically cannot be found in nature with the goal of developing new drugs. Moore calls these “unnatural natural products.”

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