A new drug promising to save millions of lives is being developed based on a discovery made half a century ago at a volcanic site in Cameroon.
Using a method called “retrosynthetic analysis,” a research team from the Tokyo Institute of Technology (Japan) has successfully identified a pathway to synthesize β-naphthocyclinone and γ-naphthocyclinone, which are precursors for a breakthrough antibiotic.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), antimicrobial resistance is one of the top health threats globally. The latest global statistics indicate that antibiotic resistance resulted in 1.27 million deaths and was associated with an additional 4.95 million deaths in 2019 alone.
Therefore, humanity constantly seeks new antibiotics to replace those that have been outpaced by drug-resistant bacteria. The recent work from Japan is highly anticipated.
A pigment produced by bacteria inside a volcanic crater has become the basis for research aimed at finding a breakthrough antibiotic – (AI Illustration: ANH THƯ).
The foundation of this research is a discovery made in Cameroon half a century ago, which involved Streptomyces arenae bacteria found in the soil of a volcanic crater, according to Science Alert.
In 1974, German chemist Axel Zeeck and his Turkish colleague Mithat Mardin demonstrated that the red pigment produced by this bacterium exhibited antibacterial properties, making it an attractive material for pharmacologists to study.
However, before developing a usable drug, both technical and raw material supply challenges needed to be addressed, requiring the synthesis of related compounds in the laboratory.
These compounds are β-naphthocyclinone and γ-naphthocyclinone, along with a method to synthesize them in large quantities.
It is only now that researchers from the Tokyo Institute of Technology have been able to complete this work.
True to the name “retrosynthetic analysis,” the research team sought to break down the complex “machine” that is the pigment produced by Streptomyces arenae to find the basic building blocks for this compound.
From there, they created those building blocks using artificial methods before simulating and then “assembling”—that is, synthesizing them—into something akin to what nature has produced.
Synthesizing antibiotics in the laboratory can help produce them in larger quantities for medical and research use, as it is certain that the bacteria in the volcanic crater in Cameroon cannot produce enough medicine for all of humanity.
Additionally, this process allows scientists to fine-tune the drug in ways that suit their intended use, providing a template for synthesizing other drugs with similar structures.
“Further efforts in this direction are underway in our laboratory,” stated Yoshio Ando, the lead chemist of the research team.
The study has just been published in the scientific journal Angewandte Chemie International Edition.
