Natural Product Identification and Production

Natural products are a source of chemical diversity and are an ideal starting point for most screening programs for pharmacologically active small molecules. Natural products can be extracted from tissues, cells, and secretions of microorganisms, animals, and plants. Crude extracts from any of these biological sources will contain a wide range of structurally diverse and novel compounds. Chemical diversity in nature is based on biological diversity. Pharmacognosy can offer the tools to identify, select, and process natural products destined for drug discovery. Usually, the natural product compound has some form of biological activity and that compound is known as the active principle - such a structure can evolve to become a discovery "lead".

Specialists from Creative Biostructure can provide MagHelix™ natural product identification and production services for drug discovery from natural products. Our partners and suppliers cover every aspect of natural products, able to satisfy your various demands. In addition, we can identify drug candidates/nutrients with therapeutic pharmacological effects from food products.

  • Natural Product Identification and Analysis
  • Natural Product Production

Natural Product Identification and Analysis

Natural Product Identification and Analysis Creative Biostructure provides powerful technologies for the identification and quantification of various components in natural products, such as LC/MS, HPLC, GCMS, SFC, NMR, and offers fast and highly repeatable validation approaches for type, purity, strength, and composition, thus providing natural product evaluation and quality control (QC) analysis. We have expanded the scope of natural product research from solving sophisticated structural problems to developing high-throughput screening approaches for QC of natural products.

We have a specialized team with extensive experience in the isolation, purification, analysis, structure elucidation, and QC of natural products. With NMR and XRD techniques and automated equipment, we can automate multiple key analysis and interpretation steps, accelerate the workflow of the analytical process, and bring efficient small molecule structure analysis for drug discovery and natural product research. In addition, we apply metabolomics-related techniques and research strategies for natural product identification and analysis. Metabolomics technology is a powerful tool for natural product discovery, involving the evaluation of quantitative and qualitative metabolites in biological systems, and interpreting the biosynthetic transformation of natural products.

Natural Product Production

   Natural Product Identification and Analysis Low availability always becomes problematic when natural products with biological activity are expected to become drugs or lead compounds. Advances in metabolic engineering and synthetic biology provide feasible solutions for the sustainable supply of these compounds. Although chemical synthesis is highly effective as a method to obtain complex compounds from simple precursors, it is difficult to implement and economically impractical on a large scale for multistep reactions required for many of the clinically relevant natural products. Therefore, fermentation remains an essential method of cultivating the producing organisms and harvesting desired natural products. One avenue that has shown promise in boosting the production titer and obtaining analogues of natural product therapeutics through fermentation is metabolic engineering.

Creative Biostructure provides global customers in the pharmaceutical industry with multiple strategies for customized natural product production. Some of these strategies include:

  • Pathway reconstitution in heterologous hosts (such as E.coli and Yeast)
  • Overexpression of rate-limiting enzymes in a given pathway or improving the activity of the rate-limiting enzyme through protein engineering and directed evolution
  • Elimination of competing metabolic pathways, including those that consume key precursors or those that produce byproducts that are difficult to remove during purification
  • Metabolic flux rebalancing to direct primary metabolism toward dedicated, key precursor metabolites

We can utilize engineering microorganisms to heterogeneously synthesize some natural products or their precursors for drug discovery, including the production of the most representative natural products in yeast: terpenoids, alkaloids, and phenylpropanoids.

References

  1. Orjala J.; et al. Bioactive Compounds from Natural Sources. Natural Products as Lead Compounds in Drug Discovery. Discovery of Potential Anticancer Agents from Aquatic Cyanobacteria, Filamentous Fungi, and Tropical Plants. 2012: 37-64.
  2. Chen R.; et al. Advanced strategies for production of natural products in yeast. Iscience. 2020, 23(3): 100879.
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