Keynote Lecture “Challenges and opportunities in anti-infective discovery from microbial natural products”

Abstract

Microbial natural products (NPs) are one of the most prolific sources for the discovery of novel anti-infective drugs to respond to unmet needs in infectious diseases. NPs present a unique chemical space and architectural complexity, and their potency and selectivity is the result of an extended evolutionary selection to create biologically active molecules with the required properties to interact and potentially inhibit microbial and parasite targets. NPs continue to play today a key role in the discovery of new molecules to fill the chemotherapeutic gap and in the last years much attention has been given to less explored and untapped rich sources of new microbial chemical diversity. Microbial genome mining and cutting edge metabolomic approaches are essential tools in the modern NPs drug discovery paradigm, opening new opportunities to identify novel classes of compounds. New integrated NPs discovery approaches involving genome-driven and cultured-based strategies combined to high throughput phenotypic screening platforms are playing a key role in the identification of new molecules to be developed and refill the antibiotic pipeline.