Scientists have discovered a natural antibiotic within a community of bacteria in the vagina, a finding that could point the way toward other human therapeutics.
Researchers have named the antibiotic, discovered by a team at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), lactocillin. Made by a common bacterial species, Lactobacillus gasseri, lactocillin is closely related to a class of drugs called thiopeptides that are currently being tested by pharmaceutical companies in clinical trials.
UCSF researchers identified 3,118 small-molecule biosynthetic gene clusters (BGCs) in the genomes of bacteria that live in various places in the human body. Using samples from the National Institutes of Health's Human Microbiome Project, they then studied the distribution of these gene clusters in genomes and metagenomes of the human microbiota.
Strikingly, their research uncovered that BGCs for thiopeptides are widely dispersed throughout human microbiota--pointing to spots in the body where drug-like molecules are produced.
The findings, published in the journal Cell, suggest the existence of numerous other naturally occurring drugs, made by humans' own microbes, that help maintain human health.
"We used to think that drugs were developed by drug companies, approved by the FDA, and prescribed by physicians, but we now think there are many drugs of equal potency and specificity being produced by the human microbiota," Michael Fischbach, an assistant professor of bioengineering with the UCSF School of Pharmacy, said in a university news report.
According to Fischbach, about a third of all medicines used in modern medicine--including antibiotics like penicillin, chemotherapy drugs and cholesterol-lowering therapies--are derived from microbes and plants.
- get more from UCSF
- see the study abstract in Cell
Editor's Corner: Biosortia tapping into nature to fill early drug-discovery void