Fungal Drug Discovery for Chronic Disease: History, New Discoveries and New Approaches.
Name
biomolecules-13-00986-v2.pdf
Description
visibility:open
Size
2.84 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (CRC64NVME)
0Fr2ZTm5cSA=
Resource type
Journal article
Date published
June 14, 2023
Abstract
Fungal-derived drugs include some of the most important medicines ever discovered, and have proved pivotal in treating chronic diseases. Not only have they saved millions of lives, but they have in some cases changed perceptions of what is medically possible. However, now the low-hanging fruit have been discovered it has become much harder to make the kind of discoveries that have characterised past eras of fungal drug discovery. This may be about to change with new commercial players entering the market aiming to apply novel genomic tools to streamline the discovery process. This review examines the discovery history of approved fungal-derived drugs, and those currently in clinical trials for chronic diseases. For key molecules, we discuss their possible ecological functions in nature and how this relates to their use in human medicine. We show how the conservation of drug receptors between fungi and humans means that metabolites intended to inhibit competitor fungi often interact with human drug receptors, sometimes with unintended benefits. We also plot the distribution of drugs, antimicrobial compounds and psychoactive mushrooms onto a fungal tree and compare their distribution to those of all fungal metabolites. Finally, we examine the phenomenon of self-resistance and how this can be used to help predict metabolite mechanism of action and aid the drug discovery process.
Journal title
Biomolecules
Volume
13
Issue
6
Article number
986
Publisher
MDPI AG
Place of publication
Basel, Switzerland
eISSN
2218-273X
Date accepted
June 9, 2023
Official URL
Related URL
Rights statement
In Copyright
Additional information
IF = 6.064 (22-23)