Potential disease-fighting 'warheads' found in bacteria

Natural acids found in soil-dwelling bacteria have the potential to act as biological warheads, and could be used to develop more effective drugs, scientists say.

A study, published today in Nature Communications, suggests scientists could build better drugs by learning from bacteria-derived molecules called thiocarboxylic acids.

"We use natural products as an inspiration for chemistry, biology and drug discovery," said Ben Shen, professor at Scripps Research Institute in the US.

Thiocarboxylic acids are rare in nature and similar to lab-made molecules called carboxylic acids. Carboxylic acids are good "warheads" because they can home in on biological targets, making them a key ingredient in many antibiotics, heart disease medications, and more.

 

Researchers took a closer look at two natural products, platensimycin and platencin, that have been extensively investigated as potential antibiotics.'

Much to their surprise, platensimycin and platencin, which have been known for over a decade to be carboxylic acids, are actually made by bacteria as thiocarboxylic acids.

The researchers revealed, for the first time, the exact genes, and the enzymes they encode, that bacteria use to create thiocarboxylic acids.

From there, the scientists set out to test whether nature-made thiocarboxylic acids could also act as biological warheads.

The researchers discovered that, as antibiotics, platensimycin and platencin thiocarboxylic acids appeared to bind to their biological targets even better than their carboxylic acid counterparts.

"We've now identified thiocarboxylic acids as natural products that can be used as drugs, and thiocarboxylic acids as warheads should be applicable to human-made drugs as well," Shen said.

Interestingly, thiocarboxylic acids appear to have been hiding in plain sight. The molecules were thought to be rare and have not been appreciated to date as a family of natural products.

Thanks to the current findings, the researchers now know how these products are made in nature. Upon searching databases of bacterial genomes, the researchers found that many species of bacteria around the world have the genes to produce thiocarboxylic acids.

"There are many, many thiocarboxylic acid natural products waiting to be discovered, making them a treasure trove of potential new drug leads or drugs" said Shen.