Lab Reproduction of Marine Compound with Antibiotic Properties

 

Baringolin is a marine product with antibiotic properties. Image: IRB Barcelona
 

Barcelona, Spain (Scicasts) – Bacterial resistance to drugs leads pharmaceutical labs to be in constant search for new antibiotics to treat the same diseases. For the last thirty years, the sea bottom has yielded a wealth of substances with properties of interest to the pharmaceutical industry.
 
Isolated from a marine microorganism off the coast of Alicante by the company BioMar, baringolin shows promising antibiotic activity at a very low concentration. The Combinatorial Lab headed by Fernando Albericio at the Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB Barcelona), which collaborates with BioMar, has now synthesized this molecule and revealed its structure. Today's results open up the possibility to better understand how this substance works and to design derivatives to turn into a viable drug in the next 10 years. These findings are published in todays' online edition of the journal Angewandte Chemie.

read all at

http://scicasts.com/bioit/1858-drug-development/6186-lab-reproduction-of-marine-compound-with-antibiotic-properties

From left to right, this image shows researchers Mercedes Alvárez, Xavier Just-Baringo and Fernando Albericio from the IRB Barcelona.
(Photo Credit: IRB Barcelona)

Xavier Just, PhD student at IRB Barcelona, has reproduced the natural structure in the lab

 Reference article:
Total Synthesis and Stereochemical Assignment of Baringolin
Xavier Just-Baringo, Paolo Bruno, Lars K. Ottesen, Librada M. Cañedo, Fernando Albericio and Mercedes Álvarez.
Angewandte Chemie (2013) http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ange.201302372 (German Edition) http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/anie.201302372 (International Edition)