Abstract
Over a long period of time, humans have explored many natural resources looking for remedies of various ailments. Traditional medicines have played an intrinsic role in human life for thousands of years, with people depending on medicinal plants and their products as dietary supplements as well as using them therapeutically for treatment of chronic disorders, such as cancer, malaria, diabetes, arthritis, inflammation, and liver and cardiac disorders. However, plant resources are not sufficient for treatment of recently emerging diseases. In addition, the seasonal availability and other political factors put constrains on some rare plant species. The actual breakthrough in drug discovery came concurrently with the discovery of penicillin from Penicillium notatum in 1929. This discovery dramatically changed the research of natural products and positioned microbial natural products as one of the most important clues in drug discovery due to availability, variability, great biodiversity, unique structures, and the bioactivities produced. The number of commercially available therapeutically active compounds from microbial sources to date exceeds those discovered from other sources. In this review, we introduce a short history of microbial drug discovery as well as certain features and recent research approaches, specifying the microbial origin, their featured molecules, and the diversity of the producing species. Moreover, we discuss some bioactivities as well as new approaches and trends in research in this field.
Highlights
Microorganisms play an important role in the development of the chemistry of natural products and medical therapy
They have been considered to be a rich source of unique bioactive compounds sincethe thediscovery discovery of of penicillin penicillin (Figure 1) in and since in 1929
All these findings indicate that the cocultivation strategy is a very promising tool in drug discovery from microorganisms
Summary
Nature sustains unlimited resources of novel bioactive molecules, and the study of these resources is very useful in the process of drug discovery [1]. Natural products have played an intrinsic role in human life for thousands of years Due to their low cost and availability, natural products have been used as a source of medicine, especially in developing countries. They are chemically diverse with various bioactivities and are the most valuable sources of drug discovery and development [3]. Over 300,000 natural products exist, and they can be classified according to their chemical nature into five categories: terpenoids and steroids, fatty-acid-derived substances and polyketides, alkaloids, nonribosomal polypeptides, and shikimate-derived compounds [19] These compounds exhibit different bioactivities, such as antibacterial, antifungal, and antialgal activities, with different mechanisms for killing pathogens. More than 10,000 of these compounds are biologically active, and more than 8000 are antibiotic and antitumor agents [20]
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