Emerging strategies to enhance microbial natural product-based drug discovery

Michael Madden; Conor Pulliam; Katherine Holandez-Lopez; Andrew Campbell; Jie Li

doi:10.1016/j.copbio.2025.103369

Emerging strategies to enhance microbial natural product-based drug discovery

Curr Opin Biotechnol. 2025 Dec:96:103369. doi: 10.1016/j.copbio.2025.103369. Epub 2025 Oct 10.

Authors

Michael Madden¹, Conor Pulliam¹, Katherine Holandez-Lopez¹, Andrew Campbell², Jie Li¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC 29208, United States; Division of Chemical Biology and Medicinal Chemistry, College of Pharmacy, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712, United States.
² Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC 29208, United States.

PMID: 41075721
DOI: 10.1016/j.copbio.2025.103369

Abstract

Natural products (NPs) have served as a major source of chemically novel, bioactive therapeutics for the treatment of various diseases. In recent years, NP discovery has benefited greatly from advancements in biotechnological fields. This review covers techniques and tools from 2022 to 2025 that have expanded NP discovery capabilities through gene-editing tools to activate silent biosynthetic genes, cell-free methods for NP production and diversification, as well as artificial intelligence and informatics tools for structure generation and correlational studies.

Publication types

Review

MeSH terms

Artificial Intelligence
Bacteria / genetics
Bacteria / metabolism
Biological Products* / chemistry
Biological Products* / metabolism
Biotechnology
Drug Discovery* / methods
Gene Editing
Humans

Substances

Biological Products