Olga Genilloud
Fundacion Medina, Spain
Title: Exploiting microbial sources to deliver novel bioactive natural products
Biography
Biography: Olga Genilloud
Abstract
Microbial natural products (NPs) have been one of the most prolific sources of new leads for the discovery of novel drugs to respond to unmet needs in infectious diseases, cancer and other therapeutical areas, with a large number of molecules and analogs still today in clinical practice. 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 bacterial targets.
NPs continue to play a key role in the discovery of new molecules to fill the chemotherapeutic arsenal and in the last years much attention has been given to marine sources and other less explored ecological niches such as lichens and plant associations which have proven to be an untapped rich source of new microbial diversity and novel NPs. Microbial genome mining and cutting edge analytical tools have become essential tools in any modern NPs drug discovery paradigm. These new platforms are allowing to focus NPs research on highly qualified microbial isolates, to assess their biosynthetic potential and address the discovery of new secondary metabolites using both culture-based approaches as well as heterologous-based expression systems to unlock new cryptic biosynthetic pathways.
